


Arcana

by BlueKiwi



Category: The Dresden Files - All Media Types, The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: F/M, Gen, On Hiatus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2017-12-10 01:36:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 37,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueKiwi/pseuds/BlueKiwi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Not every faerie tale begins with a once upon a time or ends with a happily ever after. But the day that the pirate with the green fire arrives to take her away, it almost feels like one." It's probably no surprise that the first time Elaine Mallory meets Harry Dresden, his arm is in a sling and she thinks their adoptive father is Captain Hook. [pre-series]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Le Bateleur

  
**1**   
**oOo | Le Bateleur | oOo**   


oOo

Not every faerie tale begins with a once upon a time or ends with a happily ever after, but the day that the pirate with the green fire arrives to take her away, it almost feels like one.

The caretakers are effusive with their apologies regarding the presence of the handful of detectives roaming about the main office. They've never had a runaway before, the lady behind the desk murmurs as she wrings her hands nervously. This is all very new to her – their services are superb (everyone says so) and there really is no reason for any of the children in their care to run away. He listens silently, nodding at appropriate moments, but neither voices his understanding nor sharply condemns them.

He sits in one of the uncomfortable, brightly-colored plastic chairs in the office until the last detective takes his leave (he’ll keep them updated, surely she’ll have returned within the next few days, the weather _has_ taken a turn for the worse after all). When the lady behind the desk finally approaches him, he cuts her off before another hackneyed apology can leave her lips and asks to see the rec room – he admits that he overheard her saying that the children were herded into that room until the police left.

The woman nods vigorously and leads him through a maze of pale yellow walls and linoleum floors that squeak beneath the woman’s rubber-soled shoes. The man is disturbingly silent, following her like a wisp of smoke after the last candle has been snuffed, a shadow against the cheery brightness of the hall. The woman chatters along the way, trying to fill the void with more and more words.

“Ten years I’ve worked here and I’ve never had a child like her before – oh, what do they call it? Childhood jitters, I say. There’s another word for it, I think – an acronym. Attention deficit syndrome or something like that. They’ll diagnose these children with anything nowadays.” She laughs like a bird – high and chirping and vaguely nervous. “She is a very sweet girl, very quiet – no not here, sir, we've a bit of a ways further down the hall. She wasn't very popular with the other children – a bookworm, that girl was...is – but I’ve never had any problems with her, honestly. We’ve tried her out with several foster families but there’ve always been...incidents.”

The man says nothing and the woman flushes as if she’s said too much. She opens the door to the rec room which, despite being filled with children of all ages, is oddly quiet. The younger children, with that silent sixth sense that only children their age seem to have, are all strangely subdued, quietly surrounding a television with the sound on very low (none of them seem too invested in it anyway). The older children sit around in clumps, playing board games or reading or exchanging halfhearted gossip, but the room is depressingly grim and lacking the electricity that is intrinsic to childhood.

The moment the door opens, all eyes turn towards the caretaker and the man, sparks of curiosity lighting up pale and troubled faces. Years later, the children have trouble remembering his face exactly – tall and dark, they say. There is something vaguely roguish about him – like a pirate, straight out of a child’s faerie tale. Some of the children, quieter and more perceptive than most, know instinctively not to meet his eyes, ducking their heads or hiding behind the backs of their friends.

The caretaker begins introductions, but the man holds up his hand, silencing her far more effectively than anyone else has been able to. Some of the children’s jaws drop into pink perfectly round Os.

“I’d like a moment alone.”

For some reason, it’s as if she’s heard his voice for the first time – and she swears that he _must_ have said something earlier when he came into the main office but she can’t remember – and she fumbles. Confusion wrinkles her brow but she slowly but firmly ushers the children out of the rec room. Some of them steal furtive glances at him as they pass, dissolving into giggles and whispers when they believe they’re out of earshot.

When the last fussy child has been vanquished from the room, the door closes with a soft but purposeful click. The caretaker tries to lean in to listen, but there is nothing but silence on the other side of the door. After a few moments, she departs and later wonders _why_.

The man stands by the door for a very long time with his arms crossed and a frown on his face, his gaze steadily traversing the room. There is something unfailingly patient about his stance, the firm set of his mouth, the silent and rhythmic tapping of his fingers against his bicep. The room takes on the silence that only descends on the world during winter, when snow has blanketed the ground as far as the eye can see, ravenously devouring sound and color.

Then, after several moments of the hushed standoff, he says, “You can come out now, child.”

It’s as if he’s speaking to a ghost. There is nothing but silence and stillness in the empty room littered with toys and crayons, books and dolls – the debris of youth.

And then there is a girl standing in front of him where there had not been a girl before. She peers up at him from beneath the brim of a Brewers baseball cap, wary suspicion in eyes the color of a spring thunderstorm. She isn’t a particularly beautiful child – too many sharp angles not yet softened by age and she has reached the age where her limbs are growing faster than the rest of her body – but there is something incredibly _enchanting_ about her eyes.

She seems to impulsively know not to meet his eyes for very long so she stares everywhere but – his nose, his hair, his ears, his neck. She doesn’t quite know what to make of this man who looks like a pirate. She thinks she should be terrified of the dark man but instead she finds that she’s merely curious and she juts out her chin stubbornly, mimicking his posture by crossing her arms.

“How did you know I was here?”

His smile is not much more than a brief tic at the edge of his lips, faint amusement dryly passing. “You are asking the wrong question.”

She scrunches up her pale, freckled nose. “But no one else saw or heard me for days and _days_. Even when I yelled at them, they didn’t hear me. They didn’t see me...” She bites her bottom lip and looks down at her sneakers, suddenly feeling rather guilty. She hadn’t _wanted_ to disappear, only to be left alone for awhile.

But she _had_ been angry that day before the nightmares started – Bethany and her friends had been teasing her, pulling at her braids and stealing her baseball cap and playing “keep away”. None of the aides or caretakers had stepped in and the older kids just ignored everything. She had known she wasn’t supposed to fight back and she didn’t, but her mouth had gotten her in trouble as it always did. She had called Bethany an ugly thieving pig and ended up pushed in a rosebush for her troubles. Mrs. Carson had clucked her tongue, berated both girls (although the general consensus on the playground was that it was her fault).

And then the nightmares had started.

Naturally, once it was discovered that she was the only one having a restful sleep, the other kids had dogpiled the rumors on her. Even the younger kids who had looked up to her like an older sister had shied away as gossip burned through the group home.

So she had disappeared.

 _I’m the Invisible Girl_ , she thinks, hands curling up into fists. _Just like a ghost. No one cares if I come or go._

And then she sees the green fire.

The flames, tiny and bright as emeralds, dance like a myriad of constellations in his hand. She doesn’t gasp in wonder, but her eyes do widen and she looks from the green fire to the pirate’s face. He is neither smiling nor observing the flames that jump and curl around his fingers – he is looking at _her_. Again, she thinks that she should be nervous or scared, calling for one of the teachers, but she swallows back the reaction and stands her ground.

“Tell me your birth date.”

She blinks – why would a pirate want to know her birthday? She appallingly realizes she actually has to _think_ about the answer and when she finally replies, she is annoyed with the slight waver in her voice.

“April. April 30th.”

The pirate seems to consider this answer and she finds that she’s once again entranced by the twirling flames in his hand. She looks at her own hands, wondering if becoming a ghost would let her control the fire. Despite the fire burning so close to her face, she realizes she can’t feel any heat from it at all. A few blue and golden sparks drip down from the fire onto his hand, but he never flinches. She is amazed.

Unbidden, a memory stirs to life in her mind – a woman with very green eyes and a golden bracelet at her wrist, songs on her lips and fire on snow. She know this woman, has always known this woman, but when she reaches out to her, the fire and the blizzards consume her and – the memory dies away with a gasp.

She shakes her head vehemently, nearly stumbling back, but the pirate has hand on her shoulder to keep her from moving away. She’s shivering, angry with herself for showing weakness in front of the rogue, and she crosses her arms over her chest, hiding her eyes beneath the brim of her cap. She still isn’t sure if the memory is real or not, dream or nightmare. And why would the pirate with the green fire make her remember that anyway?

“You are a special girl, you realize.”

She looks up at him – the fire has vanished but still waltzes in her mind – and scowls. “If I’m so special, how come no one wants me?” She’s the Invisible Girl, after all.

He studies her for a long, long moment – long enough where she starts to feel just a little nervous. She keeps her arms crossed though, her nose wrinkled in childish disapproval. She’s gotten used to people judging her.

“I could take you away from here, if you want.”

She sniffs, not daring to ignite the smallest bit of hope at those words. Other families had said the same thing. “You’ll be just like the others.”

His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Will I?” He kneels down in front of her so that they are almost the same height. She chews the inside of her cheek and looks down at her sneakers. His grip tightens on her shoulder but she doesn’t look up – if she does, she’s acknowledging that there is a fledgling hope inside her. “The other families didn’t know why those things kept happening to them, did they? But I do.”

He holds out his hand again and this time, instead of fire in his hand, there is a dancing snow angel, brilliant blue crystal and white snowflakes. She doesn’t impress easily, but the fact that the pirate has easily conjured both fire and ice in his hand in a matter of seconds causes something in her to stir excitedly. She almost reaches out to touch the dancing figure, but stops at the last minute. Quietly, she asks, “Magic?”

“Magic.” The angel vanishes, eaten up by tongues of green fire. “You managed to veil yourself for nearly a week without exhausting yourself. That’s rather impressive - you might be rather interesting.”

Wary pride swells up in her heart, but she doesn’t know why. “Magic isn’t real.” It sounds more like a question, even to her ears. But the pirate - with that face that is clearly unaccustomed to smiling - has shown her two marvels in the space of a heartbeat, and she herself had become invisible for nearly a week without running away. Was it magic or just an illusion?

“I suppose you’re going to be greatly disappointed then.”

At that moment, the door to the rec room swings open and the caretaker from before stands there, muttering an apology (“so sorry to interrupt, but I was really wondering what you needed-”) that dies on in her throat the moment she sees the missing child standing in front of the crouched man with the green fire. Her eyes widen and her lips move soundlessly for several moments as the man straightens, keeping a hand on the girl’s shoulder. She fidgets and looks everywhere except at the woman - a sharp squeeze to her shoulder quiets any protests she had.

_It’s magic. He’s a pirate and this is all magic._

As the woman struggles to find words, the man calmly says, “Ma’am, I believe we should talk.”

oOo

Several months later, the man with the green fire returns once more and leaves with the girl. For once, the girl does not return.

oOo

She is unable to sit still, leaning this way and that way in the car seat. The pirate with the green fire hasn’t spoiled her with treats or presents, only words sugared in mystery. The rolling hills are not what she’s used to in New Mexico, with its golden but barren plains and starkly blue sky. Here, there are mountains and fields of green and amber and rust, brilliant against a blue sky. Huge trees tower over the twisting roads that rise and fall like an ocean wave.

Despite the man’s pointed questions, she doesn’t say much about her time before the orphanage nor the dreams and nightmares that had plagued her sleep since that first night. He is rather persistent about what he calls a “veil” - when she became the Invisible Girl - but she can’t answer that anymore than he’ll answer why he adopted her. He is cloaked in secrets and shadows and while a part of her is excited by the strange adventure her life has become, another part is far more cautious. The part has been returned from too many foster homes to be gleefully optimistic.

The white origami phoenix sits on her lap, forgotten. The pirate with the green fire (oh, he’s told her his name, but for a few moments more, she’d like to think of him as a swashbuckling hero who rescued her from the orphanage) had given it to her several miles back, obviously expecting something of her. She has since found the mountains and rolling hills to be far more interesting.

The car eventually pulls to a stop down a long driveway that ends in a very large house that reminds her of gingerbread and witches. She gives the man with the green fire an expectant look and he only succinctly replies with, “Home.”

The house is surrounded by evergreens and rolling hills, as if the house with its large windows and balconies was just an extension of the summery green. She hesitantly steps out of the car, lugging her duffle bag with her (the man had noted approvingly that she didn’t have much in regards to personal belongings). She vaguely notices that he has a bag himself - much smaller than hers and she wonders if she has ever seen the pirate sleep - but her attention is quickly drawn to one of the windows. She swears that she saw the curtains move just out of the corner of her eye, but by the time she turns, there is nothing there.

She stops in the middle of the gravel pathway leading up to the front door, sucking in a breath. No, she knows she’s being watched. The man with the green fire passes by her as if all is right in the world, but she finds that she can’t take another step forward.

The door swings open.

The boy standing in the doorway isn’t much taller than she is. It’s probably really rude to stare, but after a moment or two, she decides that his hair hasn’t seen a good side of a comb in weeks and with his right arm in a sling, he looks like a...like a...like a _vagrant_. A band-aid sits right above his left brow, and she is left thinking that if the man with the fire is a pirate, than this must be one of the lost boys. She watches him warily, almost shyly. Was this the one who had been in the window watching her?

The man looks between the two. “I take it you’ll introduce yourselves.” He vanishes into the house, leaving her standing on the gravel walkway and the boy leaning out over the porch.

He blinks at her. “Um...hi.”

She stares up at him, killing the urge to nervously push a stray piece of dark blond hair behind her ear. If he is a lost boy, does that mean she’s the girl who wove the stories of pirates and Indians? “Hi.”

“You’re...uh. You’re gonna be staying with us?”

Now she thinks he’s rather dimwitted - why else would she be here? “Yes. Justin came and got me. From New Mexico.”

“Never been there.”

“You’re Justin’s son?”

The boy shakes his head. “Nope. Well...not really, I guess. He adopted me.” He pauses, looks for the right words. “My parents died a long time ago.”

Something settles in her heart right then, something warm and uncertain and strangely familiar. She nods at the boy’s words, giving him a small smile of both sympathy and understanding. “Mine too.” _I think._

His eyes widen at that and she can see the same spark of camaraderie in his eyes that she thinks may have touched something in her. He scrambles down the steps, eyes never leaving her face. She wants to wrinkle her nose at him or at least give him a brush, but the words of reproval vanish as he hurries to her side and grabs the other strap of the dufflebag with his one good hand. It hadn’t been _that_ heavy, she thinks, but the lightened load is noticeable.

Still, she tries to pull it out of his grip. “No, you’re hurt. I can carry it.”

“I want to help!”

“You might break your other arm!”

He stops walking and gives her a silly grin. “I’ll have a matching set then!” She doesn’t quite know what to make of this and only gapes at him. He settles his half of the dufflebag onto the ground and then turns so he can jut out his one good arm. “I’m Harry, by the way. Harry Dresden.”

She looks at his hand and then up at his cheerfully grinning face. She doesn’t know if she smiles back but suddenly her hand is in his and she clasps it tightly rather than shaking it.

“Elaine Mallory.”

oOo


	2. Le Pape

**2**   
**oOo | Le Pape | oOo**

oOo

Summer fades into autumn with the lazy sluggishness that is common to the season. Trees are slow to change from brilliant emerald to the champagne and crimson hues of fall, and the temperature, even in the shadow of the Rockies, still soars to scorching levels. The molasses-like seep of one season to another creates one of those rare summers that seem to last forever, the one indelible and illuminating summer of childhood memory.

This is the first summer.

When Elaine arrives, she finds a room set aside for her that doesn’t hold the hallmarks of other girls her age. There’s a full bed with white and blue blankets (Elaine is pleased to see that there is no pink anywhere to be found in her room) and a desk pushed beneath the northern facing windows of her room, a single lamp its only occupant. There are two large chests in the room – one at the foot of her bed and the other next to her desk that are empty of anything. It feels like a transient room despite its warm coloring, and Elaine despises it for many of those first restless weeks.

The one thing that Elaine does love about her room is the sloping ceiling and the view of the Rockies and fields that extend forever just beyond her window. There are some nights when she crawls out of bed to throw open her windows (the ones facing east and without the wasp’s nest hanging nearby) – they are far enough away from the city that the stars are jewels against the expanse of the immense mountain range, black shadow against deeper shadow.

And even though she thinks it’s silly and that Justin can’t be a pirate and Harry is hardly a lost boy, she looks for the second star to the right.

Displays of magic from Justin are rare. Elaine still dreams of the dancing snow angels and the tongues of green fire, but there is nothing but normalcy around the chalet. Sometimes (and Harry swears this to be true), the fireplace begins to roar on its own, sparks and golden light spreading across the living room during those rare nights when the temperature outside plummets. There are some days too that Elaine thinks she can hear Justin conversing with someone else in the house, but by the time she enters the room, it is only Justin standing there, sweeping up chalk markings on the floor.

The house is quiet most of the summer, an oddity when there are two energetic ten-year-olds living there. But Elaine still believes that there is an air of manic piracy surrounding Justin, enough to know that quick silencing glare from him will be her only warning before punishment swiftly follows. It’s not to say he’s unnecessarily cruel – there are just very few second chances with him. Discipline is harsh but fair.

She is still not quite sure what to make of Harry. She doesn’t think of him as a brother (she’s pretty sure she’d never have a brother that reckless or idiotic) and she surely doesn’t think of him as a friend. He’s like another refugee from an orphanage – Michigan, he says with a grimace when she eventually asks. He has a mouth on him – many times at breakfast, Elaine can only stare at him wide-eyed when he makes some sort of aside remark, contradicting something Justin has said and ending up exiled to his room.

She thinks his skull is made of granite.

The only incident that causes a bit of fervor around the house occurs just as summer finally starts to relinquish its hold on autumn. The wasp’s nest has been sitting beneath the roof overhang just above the northern windows to Elaine’s room all summer. She doesn’t mention it to Justin even though she is afraid that one day, the wasps are going to find a way into her room and sting her to death. She frequently burrows beneath blankets and sheets, only to eventually surface from beneath them, sticky from sweat and thinking fatalistic thoughts of being stung to death because it is too hot in her room (she wonders if becoming the Invisible Girl will stop them).

One morning though, she hears several loud thuds just outside of her bedroom window where the wasp’s nest hangs. Gray dawn is starting to shift into bright morning and she blinks sleep out of her eyes, thinking that maybe she just dreamed the noises. But the thuds come again, followed by a yelp of surprise and panic. She scrambles off her bed, running to the window and shoving the curtains aside...to find Harry, perched precariously on a ladder, a broom in one hand, trying to knock the wasp’s nest down to the ground.

The wasps don’t take too kindly to that.

It takes several minutes to find Justin and drag him back to her room, trying to explain to him about the wasp’s nest and Harry and the ladder. Justin says nothing the entire way to her room and only frowns at the scene outside when Elaine frantically starts to point – the wasps have seemingly declared revenge on Harry, swarming from the nest in a dark vibrating cloud of yellow stripes and venomous stingers. The ladder is tilted at an alarming angle and if Harry swings the broom too wildly or in the wrong direction...

Even though she knows that as an adult, Justin is supposed to do _something_ , Elaine still flinches back when he opens the windows, terrified that the swarm of wasps that are chasing Harry will come flying into her room. But Justin only waves one impervious hand at Harry and the swarm of wasps and mutters, “ _Ventus_.”

The sudden rush of wind causes Elaine’s hair to whip around her face and for the books sitting on her desk to fly open, pages and pages fluttering violently in the onslaught of wind. She stares, open-mouthed and pale, as the wasps are tossed this way and that way in the controlled gale, reeling back in the direction of the forest along with their nest which barely avoids hitting Harry on the forehead. This is different from the magic Justin had shown her all those months ago - those had been dancing images, lighting upon her imagination and igniting dreams. This was real and brutal and efficient - magic with _practicality_.

It’s nothing short of amazing.

The gale dies down after a moment, leaving Elaine’s window free of wasps. Harry clings to the broom and the ladder with a white-knuckled grip, both dazed by the rush of wind and relieved that the wasps hadn’t gotten the best of him. Elaine slowly edges closer to the window, a word of thanks on her lips, but Justin holds up his hand to silence her and is as effective as if he had literally stolen her voice.

“We’ll not have this sort of nonsense here. Do you both understand?”

Harry lifts his head, frowning. Elaine can see the beginnings of a retort starting to flash in his eyes - and why not? He had done nothing wrong. Still, she meets his eyes and shakes her head imperceptibly, the only warning that he receives. Something must strike home because his face clouds over and he sighs. “Yes, sir.”

“Elaine?”

“Yes, sir.” She ducks her head, looking at her own hands and wondering if she could ever create the flame and the ice and the wind like Justin had. Or does she already make them, but they’re just as invisible as she was in the group home? She chews her bottom lip. Wouldn’t she feel the heat? The cold? The brush of wind against her fingertips? She wants to wield the same magic that the mysterious pirate does, to put a harness on the elements and use them to make the fire dance, to make the ice shimmer, and to make the wind carry her to the second star to the right.

Dimly, she hears Justin telling her to clean up and put out the settings for breakfast. Elaine shivers, though she can’t say why, and she hurries out of her room after one more glimpse at Harry.

“Next time,” she hears Justin tell Harry, “use fire.”

(She later asks Harry why he tried to destroy the wasp’s nest. He shrugs, muttering something she can’t make out. She doesn’t get it.)

 

oOo

Later that night, Justin sits her down at her desk and demands to know why she didn’t destroy the wasp’s nest herself.

Elaine looks down at her desk, biting back her initial response. The wasps had frightened her. But admitting a fear in front of Justin is impossible - not when he seems so fearless himself and so self-assured, the cutting image of a swarthy hero from a faerie tale. She nervously brushes her hair back behind her ear before finally saying, “I don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

Her composure is rattled. “I wasn’t afraid. I just...”

He watches her for a very long time and the lie is quickly silenced. Elaine’s shaken composure slowly melts into sullenness. Maybe this is a test, and she’s already failed. She frowns inwardly - she doesn’t like the taste of that word on her mind - _failed_. Is it because she wasn’t brave enough to try to knock the wasp’s nests down to the ground herself? Or is it because she had remained silent throughout a majority of the golden summer, tolerating the wasps in muted fear and hoping they’d go away on their own? What was she supposed to do? She was content to leave the wasps alone until the summer passed into autumn and winter – maybe once winter had come, she’d have been able to knock the nest from where it has been nestled under the overhand.

She looks down at her hands. “I didn’t know what to do.”

She can feel Justin’s heated gaze on her and she wonders if she’ll turn into the same flames that he caused to dance in the palm of his hand so many months ago. Or worse, maybe he’ll think he’s made some terrible mistake and send her back to the home in New Mexico, just like all of the other foster parents she had stayed with. Her hands clench into fists but she doesn’t raise her head – Justin’s silence is a sign of disappointment, and that stings more than a rebuke.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him shift, arms crossed.

“You cannot expect for someone to always save you, Elaine.” While there is a thread of disappointment in his voice that Elaine catches onto, there’s something else in his tone that she can’t place. She doesn’t dare look up to try to read his face (months later, she still knows not to look into those eyes of his). She fidgets uncomfortably as he adds, “There are no princes in shining armor in the world. There are going to be times when you must rely on yourself.”

 _But you came_ , Elaine thinks. _You came with the magic and took me away._ It’s not as if she believes in faerie tales – she abandoned those stories soon after that night in the river, when everything was so cold and dark and she couldn’t see her parents no matter how much she tried…she shivers at the memory, her breath catching her throat as she remembers the chill of the water. Quietly, she says, “I know.”

“Do you?” She can tell by his words that he is frowning. “The world is a very cruel place, Elaine. Their words and actions can be more harmful than the sting of a wasp, or even a dozen wasps. You have already suffered the loss of your parents and the inanity of those who did not appreciate that you were...different. Smarter. Better. Yet you believe it is in your best interest to hide behind the banality of other children your age, to have their fears and to rely on other people when you’re too frightened to act on your own.”

Elaine keeps her eyes lowered. Justin has never talked about her parents before – she wasn’t even sure he _knew_ about them. But his words are like daggers in her heart, resurrecting the memories from the foster homes and group homes she’s been in. She still recalls the teasing and the bullying, the fights and the arguments. She had never fought back even though she had let snide comments slip every so often. But it had never been enough, had it? Maybe she had been afraid to do more, hoping that the people in charge – the adults – would step in and take care of everything.

She doesn’t like to think that maybe she’s a coward.

She feels a warm, solid hand on her shoulder, and she almost flinches away from the touch. She thinks she could have been braver, but now she’s done nothing except disappoint Justin and get Harry in trouble. She sits in silence, waiting for the reprimand to come, the admission of making a mistake in adopting her.

“I don’t appreciate weakness or cowardice. It would be in your best interest not to show either of those traits in the future.”

She looks up then, surprise etched across her face. Justin has a faint smile on his face – she had expected to see something completely different. The appearance of a smile, no matter how small, calms the spreading defeat in her heart, and she blinks at the sheer sense of relief that floods through her. Yes, he had been strict with his words and obvious in his disapproval, but the smile reminded her of a ghost from the past, another father who had gently rebuked her before tousling her hair with a smile she can scarcely remember.

“And Elaine?”

She tilts her head, not quite trusting herself to return a smile.

“I’d advise you not to put a veil around yourself when I’m speaking to you in the future.”

He leaves her in the quiet darkness of her room, confused and relieved and completely and utterly invisible.

 

oOo


	3. L’Étoile

**3**   
**oOo | L’Étoile | oOo**

oOo

When winter comes roaring in with a vengeance after the short autumn, no one is more surprised than Elaine who has never seen so much snow in her life. She wakes each morning expecting to find snow up to her window and is only somewhat disappointed to find that despite whatever has accumulated overnight, she and Harry both still have to go to school.

Harry, having traveled all over the States with his dad, is familiar with the bitter cold and the snow. Elaine is not and wraps herself in so many layers that by the time she gets to school she is a sweating mess. Harry laughs at her while she glares angrily at him and for several days during the winter, she refuses to talk to him out of sheer annoyance. It wasn’t her fault that she grew up where it was warm most of the time and white Christmases were a rare thing. (He does eventually apologize and Elaine - graciously, in her opinion - forgives him).

It hasn’t quite been one year since the day Justin showed her the green fire (and she still hasn’t seen it since he brought her to live with him and Harry). But it’s longer than any of her previous foster families and even though Justin isn’t particularly warm, she is very thankful that he hasn’t sent her back to New Mexico in disgust. She always gets the feeling that he expects something from her though, something that she has yet to actually provide. She sometimes turns to find his thoughtful gaze on her, but she doesn’t think too much of it because she catches him giving that same look to Harry.

Eventually the snow becomes too much even for those with a thoroughly Midwestern outlook. The blizzard that comes barreling over the mountain range ravages the roads and turns the sloping hills and surrounding forests into a bleak white wonderland. Schools and businesses close their doors. Elaine and Harry later hear on the radio that the power went out in a lot of places, but they’re already used to the quiet that comes with no television.

The thing about the storm is that Elaine doesn’t _want_ to go outside. She hates the cold and the snow and she definitely doesn’t want to go out and play in it. Instead, she sits at the desk in her room, surrounded by homework and stares out at the snow-cloaked trees and the pale gray sky. Justin is gone for the day to god know where - his old red pickup still sits in the driveway but she hasn’t seen him in all morning. He never ever tells Harry or Elaine if he’s going to be gone or how long he’s going to be gone for. The longest he had disappeared was a week and Harry, being the oldest, decided to make dinner in his absence. Elaine still hopes never to see another Coke or peanut butter and jelly sandwich again for the rest of her life.

She chews on her pencil, frowning down at her homework. She’s bored - there’s no getting around that. But the only other person in the house that she could talk to is Harry and she doesn’t know if she wants to talk to him. He’s strange and goofy and he’s always getting in trouble at school by talking back to the teachers (okay, so sometimes he’s funny and sometimes she agrees with him, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s almost always in detention and she always has to cover for him when they get home). The other kids leave them alone for the most part which is just fine by Elaine since she finds them intolerably stupid anyway.

 _Harry’s not like that though_ , a little voice in the back of her mind chides. They haven’t exactly been close - several months after she moved in, she almost feels as if they’re still sizing each other up. Justin doesn’t enforce their interaction so mostly they spend a lot of time in their separate rooms, reading or doing homework. It’s a little lonely, but for some reason Elaine vastly prefers it to life at the group home.

Usually.

Today though she decides that she’s had enough of the quiet. She picks up her papers and her books and marches down the hall to Harry’s room.

Harry’s room isn’t the neat oasis that Elaine’s room is, but she thinks that it fits him somehow. His homework lays scattered all over his desk and his clothes lie in several miniature piles on his bed. Posters nearly cover the walls - Justin isn’t too restrictive about them although she knows he doesn’t approve (she doesn’t know _why_ she knows that, she just does). Harry is sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed, reading a comic book and muttering aside commentary beneath his breath. She only has to take one glance at the homework to realize that it’s already finished, Harry’s scrawled handwriting nearly covering the lined paper.

She clears her throat, but Harry’s already looking up. “Hey. What’s up?”

She doesn’t know why, but she blushes slightly. “I’m bored and it’s too quiet. Can I do my homework in here?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Sure.” He jumps to his feet to clear off his desk. “You stuck on the math?”

She shakes her head, still standing back by the door. “Not really.” The math is easy, but her mind is elsewhere - maybe it’s the weather. “I just can’t concentrate. I keep thinking about the snow.”

“The snow?” Harry’s grin is almost infectious. “It’s pretty awesome, isn’t it?”

She glowers at him, frowning. She knows he said that because he knows that she can’t stand the snow. But for some reason, she doesn’t storm out of the room (she does clutch her books a little bit tighter to her chest though). “I don’t like it.”

“Did you see snow when you were growing up?” He finally clears the desk, dumping everything onto his bed. Justin won’t like it when he get home but she thinks that most of it will end up under Harry’s bed anyway. “Like, did it _ever_ snow in New Mexico?” He stands clear of the desk and, with his arms now empty, doesn’t seem to quite know what to do with his hands. One ends up in his pocket while the other rubs the back of his neck, and he begins rocking back and forth on his feet. Elaine can’t remember if she’s ever seen him sit still. She shakes her head.

“Not really? Sometimes, it would snow a little bit but it never stayed.” She puts her books on the desk, running her thumb over the battered corners of a science book. “When I was really little, Papa sometimes took me and Mom up north where there was a lot of snow, but I can’t really remember.”

Actually, she finds it hard to remember a lot of things about her parents - they’ve been dead for what feels like a lifetime. An echo of a laugh, a glint of a gold bracelet, green eyes shimmering by fire - memory is scrap paper and she can’t recall the details anymore.

She and Harry stand in uncomfortable silence for a few moments. The memories, however faded and distant they’ve become, still hurt because they’re a reminder of things she doesn’t have anymore. Sometimes, it seems as if it’s straight out of a storybook, but she doesn’t quite think she’s gotten her happy ending yet (and she scoffs at the idea of being a damsel in distress although she still thinks Justin rescued her from the orphanage).

“So...” Harry begins and she looks over at him expectantly. There’s a spark in his eyes that wasn’t there, and she doesn’t know if she trust so mischievous a look. “You’ve never really been out in the snow, huh?”

“No.” She narrows her eyes. “I’m not going out there.”

“It’ll be fun, I promise.”

“No. Justin’ll get mad.”

“He’ll understand.”

“It’s _cold_.”

But Harry has that _look_ on his face and an hour later, despite her protests, she finds herself shivering and sniffling and building a rather impressive snow fort with Harry.

(It eventually becomes her cover when Harry starts lobbing snowballs at her. She wins that fight.)

 

oOo

When Elaine comes down with the flu (and it was sort of inevitable considering how long she and Harry played out in the snow), Justin sternly berates her on responsibility and the consequences of her actions. She doesn’t get to curl up in bed miserably until after she’s finished her homework _and_ her chores. By the time she does get to lie down, her eyes are watering, her nose is streaming, and even though she’s running a temperature, she can’t shake the chill off her bones and she cocoons herself within three heavy quilts.

There are sometimes, she thinks, that the pirate is completely unfair.

The dark has already fallen by the time Harry shuffles into her room, a guilty look on his face. It’s late, much later than Justin would allow them to be up, and she can tell by Harry’s face that he knows it. His hair is ruffled from tossing and turning, and she thinks he looks ridiculous in his plaid pajama pants and Knight Rider t-shirt. She stares at him from beneath her quilts, wondering if he’s just going to stand in the doorway and get them both in trouble or just come in.

She sniffles. “You’re gonna get us in more trouble.”

Harry nods and shuts the door behind him. It’s dark in Elaine’s room save for the ghostly pale light of the moon, reflected on miles and miles of crystalline snow. She doesn’t bother to reach for the lamp - she’s too cold and achy to do anything except follow him with her eyes. He reaches for the lamp and flicks the switch, but there’s a sharp pop and nothing happens. Elaine narrows her eyes at him as Harry blinks in surprise. “You broke my lamp.”

“I’m sorry.” He sits on the edge of the bed and she shuffles away a few inches. He _does_ look incredibly guilty, but she isn’t sure if she wants to forgive him just yet. She peeks at him from beneath her quilts which don’t yet have that warm, smoky smell of _home_. fingers bunched in the thick, cloud-like cloth. His head is bowed and his silhouette against the blue ice night makes her think of Jack Frost, the playful Puck of wintertime. She shakes her head to clear it of the image; Harry could never belong to winter. Winter has a coldness that could never sit in Harry’s heart.

“I’m sorry too about earlier...” She squints at him as he rubs the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean to get you sick or anything. I just thought...you know, you said you were bored and you’ve never really been in the snow before and it’s not really all that bad?” He glances at her out of the corner of his eye and then continues on when he only catches a glint of a gray-eyed glare. “I can help you finish up the homework. I mean, if you’re not done with it. If you want me to.”

“I don’t.” But because he does look apologetic, she adds, “But thanks for offering. The pirate had me finish it up anyway.” It’s the first time she’s ever called Justin a pirate around Harry and she doesn’t realize she’s done it until after the words come tumbling out of her both. She bites her lip and blushes and ducks her head further under the quilts. She shouldn’t’ve said that - what in the world is Harry going to think? Just because she’s not eleven yet like him doesn’t mean that she’s that young, but when she goes around saying stuff like _that_...

Harry turns towards her, wide-eyed. “What did you say?”

Her voice is muffled from covers. “Nothing.”

“Did you call Justin a pirate?”

Elaine shakes her head, even though he can probably barely see the movement.

“Well...he does kinda look like a pirate. Like, if Captain Hook was younger or something.” Surprised, she peeks at from under the covers to find Harry rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I mean, he’s never told us anything about himself. And he sounds weird.”

“He has an accent,” Elaine ventures cautiously. Next to the fire and the dark clothes, it was one of the first things she can recall noticing about him. But even now, a year later, she can’t place the accent - no one at school sounds like that and neither does anyone on the radio or the television. “Why do you think he adopted us anyway? He’s not a kid person.”

She doesn’t mention the fire.

Harry frowns and he’s quiet for so long that Elaine begins to wonder if she upset him. She sits up, bundling one of the quilts tighter around her shoulders, and tries to figure out how to apologize (it’s really never been her strong point). But Harry interrupts her before she can and slowly says, “I think he thinks we’re special.”

Intuition leaps and jumps about in the pit of her stomach, and her grip on the blankets becomes white-knuckled. Could Harry be thinking what she’s sometimes thought ever since that day almost a year ago? And it’s not like they’re blind - they’ve both noticed strange things around the house that neither of them can really explain. But Justin hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with explanations. It’s like living inside an enigma made of wood and fire and snow, puzzle pieces falling like rain atop mysteries. It would be fascinating if it weren’t frustrating.

She wants to say that it’s magic - just like the green fire and the appearance of the man in black who is very much like a vagabond - but she doesn’t know what Harry will think if she says it aloud. Instead, she murmurs, “Special how?”

Harry shifts almost uncomfortably on the edge of the bed. “Before Justin adopted me...I think...I think I might have flown.”

 _That_ is news to her. Her eyes widen and she sits forward, a suddenly rapt audience. “You flew?”

“Well, sort of? It was a long jump in gym class and...it felt like the wind picked me up and pushed me. It _felt_ like flying.” He scrunches up his nose. “I won a medal. Justin adopted me a little afterwards. So maybe I did fly? Or maybe it’s not important, I dunno.”

She stares at him as if she’s seeing him for the first time and for a moment forgets her illness. It’s like something that settled in her heart a year ago is suddenly burning and burning so fiercely, it almost can’t be contained. She imagines her heart engulfed by that green flame, but this time the flame is _hers_. She quietly but excitedly murmurs, “I can turn invisible. I...I think that’s why Justin came for me.”

Harry looks startled, and she can almost see the wheels turning in his head. “You don’t think...?”

“Well what else could it be–?”

“But I think Justin would have _said_ something if–”

“Would he? Maybe he wanted us to talk or something–”

"Well...I guess."

“I don’t get it though.”

“You mean, what does it even mean? Me being able to fly and you being invisible?”

They look at each other and know, just somehow _know_ , what the other is thinking.

“Magic.”

 

oOo


	4. Le Papesse

  
**4**   
**oOo | Le Papesse | oOo**   


oOo

They sit beneath the gargantuan maple tree they’ve come to call their own, unbothered by the cooling breeze that has picked up in the late afternoon. The patchwork of dark branches has created a puzzle whose pieces are made up of mostly green leaves, speckled with gold and red, against a blindingly blue October sky. The maple tree sits at the summit of a small hill that nevertheless has a perfect view of the sloping amber fields and white-capped mountains in the background.

The blue-and-white leather-bound book that sits on Elaine’s lap had been a birthday gift several months ago yet the pages are still new enough to stick together every time she tries to turn a page. Traditionally, in school, the works of Shakespeare won't appear in the curriculum for a few more years, but Elaine is rather pleased to know that Justin thinks she can manage it. Sure, the words are archaic and she doesn’t quite grasp _all_ the meanings written on the pages, but she loves reading through the plays aloud, shaping the words on her tongue to tell stories both fanciful and tragic.

Harry hadn’t received the same present. A few weeks after Elaine had been inducted into the world of Shakespeare, Justin had given Harry the Lord of the Rings trilogy. His mind is currently entangled in the Battle of Helm’s Deep, and Elaine hasn’t heard a peep from him for at least an hour.

Elaine continues to page through the book that lies across her crossed legs, every so often stumbling over a few phrases she just can’t wrap her mind around. Her fingers ghost across the words as if trying to make them dance across her fingertips. She is not quite sure what to make of this play yet. The magic in it is abundant, but it does not have the same effusive lightheartedness as _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_. Since Justin pointed out the story to her, she thinks that there is some sort of lesson from the trials of Prospero and Miranda and Ariel and Caliban that she is supposed to unravel. But the only thing that she’s managed to decipher so far is that Prospero is a self-centered jerk.

She is about to turn another page when Harry suddenly jerks his head up and gives her an odd look. She blinks at him and frowns. “What?”

“What did you just say?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

Harry furrows his brow. “Yeah you did.” He points at her book. “Did you read something from there?”

Elaine honestly has no idea. She looks down at the page and the characters and plot that were unfurling upon it. “Maybe. I can’t remember.”

“Is there a fight?”

She rolls her eyes. “There can’t _always_ be a fight.”

Clearly unimpressed, Harry wrinkles his nose. “That other one you read had a lot of fighting in it. The one with the soup guy.”

Now Elaine is extremely confused. “The soup guy? When did I ever read _anything_ with a soup guy?”

“You know, the Thane of Chowder.”

Elaine stares at him for a very long movement. And then she bursts into giggles which quickly escalate into tearful laughter. The book falls off her lap, but she’s too busy laughing to care. Harry looks mildly confused at first, but then he must realize his mistake because he snorts and half-heartedly throws his book at her. Both books fall into the grass, and Harry rolls onto his back, throwing his arm over his eyes. “It’s not _that_ funny.”

“The _soup_ guy!”

“You called it him that!”

“I did not!” She buries her face in her hands, still laughing. “How can you...how can you understand all of those silly names in that Tolkien book, but not get _Cawdor_?”

“Hey, they’re not silly!”

She would have come up with a retort, but her laughter dies on her lips as a sudden, biting chill seeps down her spine. She sits up suddenly as gooseflesh ripples down her arms, a heartbeat before Harry does the same thing. Nothing has visibly changed around them – the sky is still a perfect ice blue, the air still has the crisp apple scent of autumn, and the leaves above still whisper secrets in the afternoon breeze. But Elaine knows that the chill is not something she could sense with her eyes or her ears or her nose. No, ever since that clandestine conversation with Harry back in winter, she realizes it’s something else, something she has identified as magic.

She and Harry share knowing glances and they both turn at the same time, only to see Justin standing just a few feet away, as silent as a shadow. As usual, whenever Justin just _appears_ like that in his dark clothing and with that faint look of disapproval on his face, Elaine can’t help but be reminded of stormy seas and the creaking planks of an old ship, the taste of saltwater on her lips. She quickly berates herself on the fantasy that always unravels in brilliant form in her mind, moving a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

No one says anything for a minute or so. As the silence stretches on, Elaine wonders if she and Harry are in trouble. They both finished their homework _ages_ ago, and Justin knows about the tree (after all, he’s found them there a lot during the summer). She catches Harry’s sidelong look, and he just shrugs.

“I take it you’ve been enjoying your books.”

Elaine can’t help the guilty flush in her mind, well aware that the books are currently lying in the dirt and grass at the base of the tree. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices Harry fidget and realizes that he must be thinking the same thing (Justin’s anger is ice cold, but it’s better than the heated anger of the foster families that have left burns on her skin and mind). She knows better than to make any comment about the play she’s reading - while she was enchanted by the tales of Puck and Bottom, Prospero and Ariel, she knows that Justin most likely preferred the dark tragedies and the eloquent histories of Shakespeare’s folios.

“Harry.”

Harry’s head snaps up. “Yeah?” A sharp look from Justin causes him to wrinkle his nose. “I mean, uh, yes sir?”

“It’s time to go.”

Elaine starts, eyes widening as she throws Harry a questioning look. To her surprise and disappointment, Harry blushes, looking down at his sneakers rather than meeting her eyes. He scrambles to pick up his book, muttering something about having to leave with Justin and how they’d be back soon. A look of betrayal flashes over her face as he turns his back to her, and she looks towards Justin for an explanation. Sure, Justin often disappeared for weeks on end, leaving her and Harry to contend with an empty house all on their own. It wasn’t scary or lonely with Harry there, but if Justin was planning on taking him and not her...

The wide-eyed gaze of alarm quickly becomes a suspicious pout, and she crosses her arms defiantly. Justin meets her eyes – if only for a heartbeat of a moment – and the look on her face is clearly enough to make his ghost of a smile to briefly appear. The suddenness of that rare smile surprises her and despite her insolent stance, a faint blush slowly floods her cheeks.

“You’ll be perfectly safe. We’ll be home in a few days.”

Elaine doesn’t nod or say anything as they walk back up towards the house, too stunned by Justin’s words to do more than just stand there in the autumnal afternoon. After a few moments, she shakes her head, trying to clear out the warmth that has spread from the pit of her stomach but finds that it’s nearly impossible.

Justin said she’d be _safe_ , that they’d be _home_.

She rubs her hands on her jeans, biting her lower lip and swearing to herself not to cry. No one has said that to her in years and years, ever since the accident that took away her parents. Oftentimes, it’s difficult to even recall her father’s strong hands and laughter, her mother’s lyrical voice and blazing green eyes. The memories are like the leaves that surround her now, brilliant for a time but slowly fading into dust as the winter comes. She balls her hands into fists, rubbing at her eyes and pressing her lips into a bloodless line because she’s scared to put her trust in those words – but Justin is always so confident and strong. If he says that this is their home, that she’d be safe, she can’t help but feel as if it’s truer than anything she has ever known.

She turns back to the oak tree...and stops.

She’s no longer alone.

A girl about her age (or older or younger – it’s hard to tell) sits at the base of the trunk, paging through the book of Shakespeare’s plays with a reverence that belies her age. She’s dressed in a pair of overalls with one of the straps undone, a bright green camp T-shirt, and flip-flops, all of which have seen many days romping about on a playground somewhere. Elaine tries to blink the sunlight of the girl’s hair out of her eyes until she realizes that her hair is really that blindingly golden.

And she has _her_ book.

“Who are you?”

The girl looks up at Elaine with eyes even greener than the shirt, her lips curling up into a smile. “I’ve always liked Shakespeare.” She points down to the book, but Elaine is too far away to see which of the plays has captured the other girl’s attention. The girl continues to peer up at her, her eyes as dazzling as summer. “But I can see that you do too. You have that look about you - the look of someone who knows the stories better than what their heart will ever admit. I’d expect nothing else for one born on summer’s eve.”

Elaine frowns at the strange words, keeping her arms crossed. There is something very strange about the other girl with the emerald eyes and the knowing but benevolent smile, and while it doesn’t unfurl a kernel of cold wariness within her, she doesn’t dare step any closer. Instead, she keeps her distance of a few paces, watching as the girl goes back to the book with that same amused little smile. “I want my book back.”

“Miranda, I think. You have the look of Miranda about you.” The girl closes the book then almost reverently and doesn’t look up at Elaine for several moments, as if contemplating her own words. “Or Rosalind. Rosalind suits you too.”

“Can I have my book back?”

To her surprise, the girl hands it over – Elaine had been expecting to have to wrestle her for it. She pulls the book to her chest, her annoyance slowly dissipating into wary curiosity. The girl has pulled her knees to chest and is staring out over the painted fields and mountains, rosy lips lifted in that disconcerting smile. But for some reason, Elaine still doesn’t walk away and leave her be. Instead, she finds herself sitting on the grass just a few feet away from the girl, Shakespeare’s stories spread across her lap. She thinks she sees the girl’s smile grow a little wider, but it could just be a trick of the setting sun.

They sit in silence for several moments, Elaine clutching her book in inquisitive anticipation and the nameless girl absently winding her fingers through the long blades of grass. Elaine isn’t sure how long the silence lasts, but the sun is already beginning to dip behind over the horizon of jagged and frosted mountains, painting long bronze shadows over the fields. Harry and Justin are probably long gone by now, and Elaine isn’t exactly looking forward to going back to an empty house, even with the promise of their return.

She looks down at the book in her hands. Ever since that secret conversation with Harry months and months ago where they concluded that their adoptive father was a magician (and a pirate but Elaine still doesn’t dare tell Harry she still believes that), Justin had been teaching them little lessons. She still wasn’t sure if there was any magic in it - Justin hadn’t taught either of them how to hone their gifts of flight and invisibility, and neither of them were quite willing to bring it up. Try as she might in the privacy of her room, she can’t replicate her disappearing spells from the youth home almost two years ago. It’s frustrating to know that there’s a fleeting world of magic at her fingertips that she can’t quite touch.

She wonders if Miranda ever thought the same thing when dealing with the mysterious and dramatic Prospero.

“What’s your name?”

Elaine is startled enough by the sudden question that she almost drops her book. She narrows her eyes at the girl who still looks out over the rolling hills and mountains beyond with an enviable serenity. “I asked first.” She knows it’s a little childish, but the girl was too weird for her tastes. Maybe Harry would like her.

The girl’s smile, even half-seen, is sweet. “They call me Aurora.”

Elaine’s brows knit together in a frown. “Like the goddess of the dawn?”

“Not many people know that. But yes - you are correct.” For some reason, the pleased tone in the other girl’s voice makes her rather proud of herself. She tilts her head to the side, her grip on the book slowly becoming less white-knuckled. “And your name?”

“Um...Elaine.”

“You don’t sound so sure, Elaine.”

“It _is_ my name.”

The girl raises a finger to her lips as if trying to hush her. “Shh. Names are important, Elaine. They have more power than you know. Have you not been taught this simplest truth?”

Elaine shakes her head, but she doesn’t know if she’s arguing with the girl or agreeing with her. There’s something about the way the girl talks that makes Elaine both incredibly wary of this girl Aurora...and makes her want to be her closest friend as well. She can already see Justin’s frown - strangers were a bad lot, and people you knew were even worse. His words, in that odd accent, already ring in her ears.

“If names are power, why’d you tell me yours?”

The girl finally turns around again, her elfish face lighting up in alien amusement. Something settles in the put of Elaine’s stomach and she isn’t sure if it’s fear or awe. One thing is certain - this girl is not human, and Elaine was silly for thinking that anyone could have snuck up on Justin without him noticing. She sucks in her breath, trying not to drop her book to fiddle with one of her pigtails.

Justin is brave and so is Harry. She can be brave too.

Aurora stares at her for a moment more, her eyes brightening ever so slightly as if she knows that Elaine has realized what she is (or rather, what she is not). Finally, she tilts her head in an almost humble nod. “You are an interesting girl, Elaine. I thought we could be friends.”

“Friends?” The word sounds as dry as the desert on her tongue. She clears her throat, runs her tongue across her lips. The other girl doesn’t really look scary, but appearances can be deceiving. “Why’d you wait until Justin and Harry were gone? Harry...” She stops. She’s sure Harry would have liked to make another friend - neither of them were very popular at school after all. But her pride is still glowing warmly and it has latched firmly onto Aurora’s words. The not-human girl came to see her. _She_ was the interesting one.

Elaine looks down at the book, feeling somewhat guilty. “Why would you want to be friends with me?”

A laugh this time, drenched with the sounds of summer. Elaine shivers as a strange heat washes over her - it is the breath of something magical and foreign, something much bigger than she could ever hope to be. But for some reason, she doesn’t run or scream or cry. She still sits stubbornly on the ground, clutching her book, hoping for better answers than this.

“Because you remind me of someone I used to know.”

Elaine looks up at her, baffled and intrigued. “Who?”

The girl with the summer green eyes stares at her, but her smile is now tinged with sadness.

“That is a secret. Maybe one day, if we’re still friends, I will tell it to you.” Elaine isn’t sure but she thinks Aurora’s hair has taken on the quality of starlight now as the sun sails further and further behind the mountains. “Hell, Elaine, is empty, and all the devils are here.”

 

oOo

Harry comes home with a baseball mitt and the ability to create fire.

Elaine doesn’t tell him about Aurora.

 

oOo


	5. Le Soleil

**5**   
**oOo | Le Soleil | oOo**

oOo

“Concentrate.”

The word burns in Elaine’s mind, and she swallows back a curse of frustration because all she has been doing for the past three hours is concentrating. The spell that she is learning is simple, probably on the same level of spells that Harry has said he’s done and she doesn’t think it’s _fair_ that Justin expects her to be able to do the same so easily and so soon. She’s tired and her eyes are burning and a roaring headache is threatening to envelop her, but he still doesn’t let her take a moment to collect herself.

This is not how she expected to spend her birthday.

She takes a deep breath, rubbing at her eyes. “I’m _trying_.” A discouraged note sneaks into her voice and she wants to run to her tree and bury her nose in one of her novels, but the sun has already disappeared behind the jagged peaks of distant mountains. The moon has yet to rise and the dull crimson light of sunset is barely enough to see by – if it wasn’t for the warm glow from home just beyond the copse of trees, it would soon become pitch black outside, and she’s sure she’d never find her way back.

She looks down at her hands, empty of any of the magic that Justin himself had held only moments before. It is slowly getting colder and darker, and the electric blue sparks and fire that had encompassed Justin’s hands are beyond her. She bites her bottom lip bloodless, trying to pull her thoughts together again. Evocation, Justin has bluntly told her, is not her strong suit, and will never be. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t allowed to _try_ to create the fires that Harry has constantly been starting around the house for almost three months.

The pile on the ground begins to smolder and smoke, and there is a faint greenish-white glow beneath the wet leaves and rich, moist earth. But despite Elaine willing a spark to catch, nothing does and after a minute or two, the light fades away and leaves them in the dim light of the setting sun. She lets out a breath she hadn’t known she had been holding, feeling her fingernails dig into the soft flesh of her palm. The failure makes her feel like Atlas holding aloft the world, and she keeps her eyes stubbornly cast down onto the wet tinder, angrily feeling them sting with unshed tears.

Harry had told her that Justin let him start a fire in a fireplace – why was _she_ supposed to start one after a thunderstorm? Nothing wet burns, and yet somehow a miracle is supposed to occur. Maybe when she was younger, she’d have thought that magic was made of miraculous things, but now she’s not so sure. And even if it _is_ , it looks like she doesn’t have the talent.

“I can’t do it,” she says, trying to not let the disappointment in those words choke her. Her veils are simple and get easier by the day (even though she was a little sad to find out it wasn’t _quite_ the power of invisibility). Why was everything else so difficult?

Justin is silent for a moment, and she feels the weight of his judgment on her. She forces herself not to wilt under that unrelenting frown, but she can’t bring herself to try again.

“You can’t...or you won’t?”

The implication of the question stings, and fury and despair well up within her. “I _can’t_. I tried. But I can’t make it catch. Something that’s wet won’t burn.”

“Magic is finding a way to do something that many deem impossible.”

Elaine rubs at her arms, feeling the chill of night slowly beginning to creep up on her. She has tried to do the impossible, hasn’t she? She doesn’t like to think that Harry is better at something than her because, for the most part, Justin always treats them equally. But Harry seems to have a knack for evocation, conjuring up tiny flames the color of gold-infused rubies and small bursts of air powerful enough to close doors with resounding clicks. Her veils are hard enough to concentrate on, resulting more out of instinct than any actual talent. It scares her, the thought that she is no good at the magic that subtly surrounds her. What if Justin sends her back to the orphanage, even almost three years later?

She looks down at the damp pile of tinder, pressing her lips into a thin line. The words that she wants to say stall just at the edge of her tongue, and she can’t look up to meet Justin’s eyes. She can sense him shift just out of her line of sight, thinks she can hear a sigh of disappointment. “Sit down.”

She doesn’t argue, but sits on one of the decaying logs just a few feet away. She brings her knees to her chest, and glares bitterly at the little mound of unlit leaves and pine needles, too tired to try to impress him again. She wishes she could just disappear.

_But I’d probably mess that up too._

Elaine watches out of the corner of her eye as Justin walks over to the little mound, but he doesn’t light it either. It would have been humiliating to see him do it so easily when she can’t even make a spark catch, and she’s begrudgingly thankful that he doesn’t. He remains quiet for a moment or two, contemplating the fireless area.

 _I couldn’t do it. I messed up._ She rests her chin on her knees, ignoring the burn of tears in her eyes. _Just say something. Anything. Please._

“Elaine...” This time, she is _sure_ she hears a sigh. “Do you know what Beltane is?”

The question is strange, and she rubs at her eyes to force away the tears before looking up at him. He’s turned away from her, his arms crossed. At this angle, she can’t read the expression on his face and in the darkness, his body language is impossible to decipher. She hugs her knees a little closer to her chest before quietly replying, “No.”

“Beltane,” Justin begins, his accented voice soft in the falling twilight, “is an ancient festival that used to mark the beginning of summer. It occurs between the spring equinox and the summer solstice yet few still recognize the day itself, let alone its importance. Humans have bastardized it into a frivolous holiday, and even then they don’t honor it as well as its counterpart in the autumn. But then, I suppose that one day is well enough if they insist on tainting it with their own traditions.”

Elaine notes the annoyance in his voice, but says nothing. She doesn’t know if the annoyance is directed at her or the people who celebrate...whatever it is he’s talking about.

“The festival celebrates life, as its sister festival celebrates death and the beginning of the long, dark days of winter. Life is creation, just as magic is.” He nods at the unlit pyre. “But life, no matter how celebrated, can also be used as a weapon of destruction – it takes someone of immense ability to wield it for both purposes. But most are trapped by their own morality and inconsequential rules, and they often fail to be anything of note.” He turns back to her then, and she still knows, from all of these years, not to directly meet his eyes. She bows her head, watching as the last vestiges of crimson daylight slowly but surely fade into darkness.

He continues, “The misgivings of people, whether due to fallible tradition or denial of the truth, and the trappings of their own self-worth eat away at any potential that they may have initially possessed. Look at your lack of knowledge about your own day of birth – that kernel of truth could prepare you for challenges you may not even be aware of yet. But instead, you knew nothing of it. The weakness that parades as ignorance is a disease that can kill.”

He gestures to the pyre, and Elaine can smell the faint odor of smoke in the cool spring breeze. She flushes immediately, angry with herself. It isn’t too much to guess what Justin is saying. She is unwilling to be ignorant – she prides herself on her wit and her intelligence, whether in school or when trying to get out of scrapes that Harry has gotten them into. To be condemned as being ignorant hurts more than anything else Justin could have said.

 _It’s not my fault, it’s not_ , she thinks furiously, trying to figure out what it is about the spell that completely eludes her and she can find nothing, _nothing_. It is so basic – a force of will, shaped in her imagination, and she can’t for the life of her do it. It’s not fair, it isn’t right, and she doesn’t like the word of failure that seems branded on her skin.

“We’ll end the lesson for tonight.” Justin’s words are quiet but still break her out of her enraged reverie. “You will try again tomorrow.”

His words are a blow to her pride. It’s almost as if he doesn’t believe she can do it tonight. But she wants Justin to see that she can be every bit as good as Harry, even if her headache screams at her to take the offer and sleep on it. Sheer stubbornness wins out though and she shakes her head. “No. I can do it.”

Justin frowns. “Not tonight.”

Elaine doesn’t like that answer – if Justin can create illusions of ice and emerald flames and Harry can light several candles on command, she can do this little thing. She climbs to her feet and slowly approaches the pyre. For some reason, she thinks of the strange not-girl from several months ago, the one who called herself Aurora. She hasn’t seen her since, but her words about Shakespeare and his heroines still catch in Elaine’s mind. _The Tempest_ and its erudite words and quaint surrealism have stuck with her – maybe it’s because she sees familiarity in Prospero and Miranda and Ferdinand (at least it’s a much better substitute than pirates and lost boys).

Unbidden, the words rise in her thoughts, but she bites them back. She closes her eyes and _concentrates_.

 _Hush and be mute_ , she thinks. _Or else our spell is marr’d_.

She doesn’t see Justin’s dark frown, concentrating too hard on the spell. It’s not roaring flames she needs. It’s not a massive bonfire. _Just a spark to start the fire, nothing more._ Her skin tingles as if her limbs have all fallen asleep, and she can smell the rich, pungent scent of the surrounding pines and the damp earth. She thinks there might be a rainstorm coming – there is suddenly the sharp, telltale odor of ozone in the air and she thinks it must be so very simple for a single bolt of lightning to cause more destruction than she could ever hope.

She staggers suddenly, as the roar of her headache crescendos into a frightening black hole of pain, and only Justin’s strong grip on her shoulder keeps her from falling into the still-unlit pile of tinder. She blinks black spots out of her vision, exhaustion still threatening to send her to her knees. She looks at the damp pile of leaves and twigs, and barely manages to refrain from letting out a curse of sorrowful frustration. Something trickles on her upper lip – she lifts her hand to her nose and pulls her fingers away, only to find them stained red with blood.

“I didn’t do it,” she murmurs dejectedly, the humiliating disappointment almost too much to bear. She had tried again, and _still_ failed.

Justin doesn’t say anything for several moments. To her surprise, he gives her a gentle squeeze on her shoulder and she dares to look up at him. He has a contemplative look on his face, his eyes never leaving the frustrating pyre.

“No, not quite,” he says. He pauses and adds, “But you’ve done something else.”

Her eyes widen, the smallest sliver of hope warming the pit of her stomach. “What’d I do?”

But despite her curious pleading and prodding and eventual begging as they venture out of the woods and back home, Justin remains utterly silent on the subject.

(Strangely enough, for several days afterwards, it smells as if it is going to rain but the skies remain ostentatiously blue.)

 

oOo

A few days later, Elaine awakes from a nightmare to a thunderstorm so fierce that the windows rattle with each deafening boom of thunder.

Even as she wipes away the tears from her eyes and tries to convince herself that the nightmare wasn’t real, she realizes that she can only remember the barest scraps of the dream. They are fleeting images – suffocating darkness as icy water closes over her head, the glint of a golden bracelet consumed by murky depths, and someone’s face, obscured by ghostly moonlight, that she should recognize but can’t. She shivers violently, pulling her quilt around her shoulders and remains awake for the rest of the night, staring out into the violent storm outside.

The lack of sleep, the thunderstorm, and the resulting migraine from both leave her in an extremely grouchy mood for the rest of the day. If Justin is at all bothered by it, he says nothing. By the time the afternoon rolls around, he has disappeared and Elaine suspects he has made yet another of his vanishing trips to who knows where.

Harry, believing himself to be some sort of detective, has tried to figure out what’s wrong with her, poking his head into her bedroom throughout the day. She furiously snaps at him more than once, lobbing pillows at him everytime he tries to enter the room. The anger is better than the sadness and frustration that is building up within her, and she grimly settles on that rather than face her own failures and nightmares. She stays curled up in bed, glumly thinking that she hates magic and spring and lightning and being twelve.

Eventually though, as the thunderstorm peters out that evening, she is left feeling rather exhausted and a little ashamed by her words towards Harry. She ventures out of her room and heads down to the living room, where she finds Harry quietly playing a game of Solitaire. The pale grayness of the stormy day is slowly fading into the darkness of night, but most of it is kept at bay by the pale golden light thrown by the fireplace.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” She hesitates for a moment before sitting on the couch across from him. He doesn’t look up from his game, and she sighs. “Listen, I’m sorry. About earlier.”

He shrugs, not looking up from his game. “Forget about it.”

She frowns at him. “You’re still angry with me, aren’t you?”

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are! You won’t even look at me.”

“I’m playing my game!”

“And I’m _trying_ to apologize.” She throws one of the couch pillows at him. It bounces off his arm and lands on the floor. Harry gives her a disgruntled look which she returns, crossing her arms stubbornly and straightening her spine so that she’s sitting ramrod straight. “Now. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

He sticks his tongue out at her. “Nope.”

“ _Harry!_ ”

He throws the pillow back at her which, being caught unaware, hits her full in the face. Her nightmare and headache forgotten, she lets out a cry of surprise as her posture is ruined beyond management, and she nearly tumbles off the couch. Harry makes a leap at her with a cry of mischief and begins tickling her mercilessly so that she suddenly must concentrate on trying to get revenge on him _and_ squirming out of his grasp. She grabs the abused pillow and, laughing and kicking and _trying_ to be angry with him for not accepting her apology, begins to bash him over the head with it.

“You’re...supposed to be...gracious...and say, I forgive...you!”

“Nope. Won’t do it.” He somehow manages to sit on her legs, poking her stomach and arms and grinning wildly. “Not today, not tomorrow, not _ever_.”

Eventually, thanks to a winter growth spurt that has given her one or two inches on him, Elaine manages to wrestle Harry to the floor. With a triumphant smirk and ignoring the fact that her hair is mussed and Harry’s cards lay scattered all over the floor, she sits on his back as he flails and protests at the sudden turn of events.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Lemme up!”

“Not until you accept my apology.”

“Fine, fine. I accept your apology. Now get off!”

Graciously, she clambers off him and scrambles to claim his former seat on the coach. Harry makes a face at her and begins picking up the fallen cards on the floor. She watches him for a moment and, as if light is slowly being shed on a darkened corner of her mind, a wild idea occurs to her. After everything that has happened that day to put her in a horrible mood, it almost feels as if she knows the answer to a riddle that has been plaguing her for ages and ages.

She leans forwards to peer at the cards on the floor - every card has its place and the deck itself has order. Order brings life to the smallest of things but, if need be, it can be as destructive as the storm that howled furiously outside for most of the day - the scattered cards are proof of that. How one wields order is how one wields life and destruction - there is no chaos without motivation. Order breeds chaos. Life breeds death. Magic is just another bit of that order, supplying power just like anything that runs on electricity.

She suddenly remembers Justin’s words and Propero’s warning and, very cautiously, she lets out a breath of will.

 _Tjaw, ib, pa_.

The words unravel in her mind and the spell ghosts out from her as a mist over a lake, gently alighting on the cards and slowly sending them dancing through the air. She watches, silently stunned because she wasn’t sure it would even _work_ , as the eleven cards float towards the ceiling, twirling in a mystifying waltz. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Harry looking up too, an impressed look on his face.

“Wow. You’re doing that?”

For some reason, the knowledge that she _is_ powering the spell scares her because she _hasn’t_ been able to do the dramatic spells Justin and Harry were able to do. Blushing furiously, she stops...whatever it is she doing. Half of the cards drop back to the floor while the other half simply vanish, hidden behind veils that Elaine _still_ isn’t able to completely control. She grabs the couch pillow and buries her face in it, muttering something about stupid magic and stupid cards.

The couch settles slightly as Harry climbs back on it, and Elaine dares to glare suspiciously at him. Was he going to laugh at her? Maybe Justin already told him about her failure in the woods. She can’t bear the thought of Harry knowing and...and... _pitying_ her.

But Harry doesn’t say anything along those lines. He looks thoughtful. “That was pretty cool. I mean, it wasn’t like you blew anything up but it was still kinda awesome.”

“Great,” Elaine groused, burying her head back in the pillow. “I can make things look pretty and disappear. Why do _you_ get to blow everything up?”

She can hear the grin in Harry’s voice. “Because I’m really, really, really good at it.”

“At least your eyebrows have grown back.”

Harry snorts. “What I’m saying is that...well, you know. Making stuff explode is what I’m good at. Maybe doing really...er...” Even with her face buried in the pillow, she can imagine him wrinkling his nose as he tries to sort his thoughts into words. “Maybe doing really _fancy_ stuff is what you’re good at. See, I would have made the cards burn up. I mean, it would have been pretty sweet to look at but I wouldn’t be able to play Solitaire anymore.”

“I’m glad you’re still able to play Solitaire,” comes the muffled reply.

Harry playfully punches her shoulder, laughing. Rolling her eyes, she returns the gesture, feeling a little bit better than she has been feeling all day. Harry may be weird and irritating, but at least he’s good at cheering her up.

And when he eventually coaxes her into playing Crazy Eights, only to find out to his dismay and her delight, that she is _much_ better at it than he is, she feels _much_ better.

 

oOo

However, the cards, to both of their confusion, never reappear.

oOo


	6. La Lune

  
**6**   
**oOo | La Lune | oOo**   


oOo

The Queen of Cups spins chaotically above her head in the darkness, the tiniest details of the card lost in the frantic blur of movement. Elaine blinks the dancing flames from the bonfire out of her eyes, trying to hide her weariness behind a grimace. The rest of the deck lays scattered on her sleeping bag, long forgotten – she has been working on this spell for the past hour, and the slow but steady path of stars and constellations far above have marked her progress. Despite the waning days of summer, the wooded areas that have quietly surrendered to the black-violet of night have a chill about them that feels almost primal in its intensity. She shivers.

The spell is not difficult – using the card as a focus isn’t anything new to her, especially after that disastrous evening over three months ago attempting to light a fire. She is trying to put enough force of will into the spell so that it will last the night without her having to be awake for it. But she’s finding it hard to focus, and she has a good idea why – whispers sit atop the wind, quietly nestling as doubt in her mind that she steadily tries to ignore.

 _The Queen of Cups_ , she thinks, closing her eyes and trying to readjust her concentration. _The psychic and the healer. Magic and purity of heart. Not the Queen of Swords._

Invisibility. Silence. The veil, she hopes, has fallen around her in a dome ten feet in diameter and seven feet high. The flames of the fire and the rich scent of smoke and burning wood are hard to adjust for; eventually she has to give up on trying to eliminate the scents of the small campsite in order to focus on the stupid sparks and smoke that keep flying overhead more than seven feet.

After several more minutes, the Queen of Cups falls onto her lap and Elaine lets out of a sigh of exhaustion, wiping her brow. “I think I’ve got it.” She glares at the reclined figure just across from her, laid across blankets with the stories of stars in his eyes. “The fire is too big.”

Harry blinks, the myths of heroes and fantastical creatures gone in that single silent action, and sits up, glancing over at the fire that still crackles and glows only for them. There is something enchanting about the way the flames move against the darkness of the sky and the tangle of branches webbing their way overhead - the world, it seems, has come to a complete halt except for the two of them and the stars making their way to the horizon in their eternal march.

He doesn’t have enough talent yet to control the flames after they’ve sprung to life, so he settles for looking into the heart of the fire itself. “It is not. Just because it took you forever to create a veil...”

“It’s _not_ as easy as snapping your fingers,” she replies irritably, the exhaustion fraying her temper. “I have to remember the smell of smoke and the shadows and the stupid sparks and the sounds of wood snapping. All you have to do is say a magic word and we’re two steps short of a forest fire.” She pulls her knees to her chest, glowering venomously at the fire. It isn’t her fault that Justin seems to expect her to pull off more subtle, more intrinsic magic - if Harry is a chainsaw, then she’s a chisel, and Justin trains them accordingly, usually to the point where Harry sleeps for days on end and her headaches are revealed through blood gushing from her nose.

Still, Elaine thinks, maybe that is how it has to be. Justin never speaks of other people like them, and save for the girl Aurora whom Elaine had met last summer, she has never encountered anyone else remotely magical. Justin is very strict about his rules concerning their powers - do not tell anyone, no never tell anyone, this is a secret to take with you to the grave. If she or Harry go out into the world one day without being trained properly, what would become of them? The world, Justin says, is appalling mediocre and does not deal with change well. “Blinded” is what he called it.

 _“It is far better to be the one tying the blindfold than the one ripping it off,”_ Justin had told them both after dinner one day. The reason, he had explained, was that once you pulled the blindfold off, you were unleashing chaos upon the imbecilic masses, and even people of their caliber could not predict the lengths foolish people would go to when confronted with the unknown. Mankind had a terrible history of mayhem, darkness, and death when faced with things they could never possibly understand.

 _“So we’re there to protect them?”_ Harry had asked, a frown on his face, ever intrigued by the mantle of heroism that had sparked his imagination. Elaine had taken one look at Justin’s face and shook her head, reaching another conclusion entirely.

 _“No, not to protect.”_ She had thought she saw a glint of something ineffable in Justin’s eyes when he caught her shaking her head, but it was gone before she could make out what it meant. Even now, recalling that conversation, Elaine can’t help but be a little disturbed. While memories of her real parents have gradually faded into the gray mist of time over the years, only resurrected by foaming dark lakes and rivers, she thinks that there were other values instilled in her in those first few years of her life. But she can’t remember them past glimpses of memories that sometimes she assumes can’t truly belong to her.

She realizes belatedly that Harry has been asking her a question and she gives him a disgruntled look, thrown from a reverie so suddenly that she can’t help but be annoyed. Rather than reply, she only raises a pale eyebrow at the repeated question and Harry rolls his eyes, collapsing back onto his sleeping bag to gaze back up at the stars. She wonders why he pulled the sleeping bag out of the tent when all he’s going to have to do is drag it right back inside, a flimsy if wanted protection from the dangerous mysteries of the night.

She follows his gaze upwards, staring up at the stars. They are scattered and senseless to her, faraway glittering gems that did not paint that same grand pictures in her mind as they did with the ancients. She sighs, crossing her arms. It really is a silly lesson from Justin, putting them out here to camp for the night. She knows it is only to test their skills and how far they’ve come in the past few months, but the inky blackness of the woods and the unforgiving cold glow of the stars unnerve her.

“That’s Cygnus.”

Elaine blinks at Harry, who has folded his hands behind his head. Gold lights flickers on one side of his face, while the deep blue shadows of night creepy like dark tendrils on the other. “Cygnus?”

“The swan.” Harry points nearly directly overhead, but Elaine has no idea where he’s pointing - there are so _many_ stars. “Look right above us. There’s a group of stars that sort of looks like a bow and arrow with no string. The tail end has a really bright star...?”

Elaine squints. “I see it...I think.”

Harry grins slightly, the pinpricks of stars reflected in his dark eyes. “Some stories say that the swan represents Zeus, when he turned into one to court Leda.”

“‘Court’? Did you just say _court_?”

“Yeah and-?” His cheeks turn slightly red and Elaine struggles to hide a giggle. “Anyway, other stories say it was King Cycnus who got turned into a swan after a fight with Heracles-”

“Hercules?”

“No, _Heracles_. This is the Greek story, not the Roman one! Keep up, Elaine.” She sticks her tongue out at him, and he decides to ignore her. “But I think it’s actually Orpheus. See that weird cluster of stars right by its head?”

Elaine scrunches her nose. “The zig-zaggy one?”

“No, that’s Lacerta - you’re looking in the wrong direction. The _other_ one.”

She narrows her eyes and cranes her neck. It’s hard to make anything out. “The sting ray?” Harry lets out a long exasperated groan, throwing his arm over his eyes. She throws one of the tarot cards at him, letting it flip through the air and fall harmlessly on his thigh. “Hey, I never went stargazing when I was little. How am I supposed to know which one to look for?”

Harry doesn’t remove his arm from his eyes. “The other cluster of stars is a lyre. It’s the constellation Lyra. I think it’s Orpheus’s lyre, placed there by the Muses after his death.” When Elaine doesn’t respond, he peeks at her from beneath his sleeve to see her gazing up at the stars with a bemused expression on her face. “What?”

“Didn’t...didn’t Orpheus try to rescue his wife from the Underworld?” She’s sure she has heard this story before, but she doesn’t know from where. The faintest memory of it is tickling at her thoughts, silvery details that don’t quite come to light beneath a blackened field of stars. “He wasn’t supposed to look at her before they reached the gates, but he began to think she wasn’t there and turned back to look at her - and then she was gone. He lost her again.” She doesn’t trip over the words because the story is _there_ in her thoughts, and she’s reminded of another dark place, water closing over her head and someone’s hand grasping hers to pull her towards the light...

“Elaine?”

“Huh?” She blinks and tears her gaze away from the sky only to find that Harry is giving her a quizzical look. “What?”

“You know the story?”

She shakes her head. “Not really. I mean...I know bits and pieces of it, I guess.” She can’t remember who told her though and she is sure she hadn’t learned about it in school. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices Harry sit up on his elbows, still looking at her. She tugs her knees closer to her chest. “Maybe I heard it before when I was little. Back before...” She trails off, whatever words she was about to speak lost in the crackle and glow of the fire. Discussions of the past before they’d come to live in the shadow of the mountains were rare - neither she nor Harry offered up much information regarding the dark days before Justin. For Harry, it was because he didn’t like thinking about it. For Elaine...

There wasn’t much _to_ remember.

“My dad told me the stories.” She glances over at Harry, who is peering up at the stars with an odd look of sad longing on his face, etched in memories long gone. “When we used to travel. He told me about all the myths and the faerie tales and the legends. The Olympian gods, Camelot, Shakespeare...he liked to tell stories. I don’t remember them all but the ones that I do remember...well, they were adventures, right? Good triumphing over evil, the hero rescuing the princess, finding long lost treasure.”

She rests her cheek on her knees, watching him as he continues.

“Like, I remember traveling on the road for so long and it was always at night. So one time he pulled over, right? And he was like, I’m gonna tell you about the stories written in the sky. And we sat on the hood of the car - I think we were in Michigan - and it was spring so it was still kinda cold out. But he pointed out all of these stars and told me their names and what constellations they formed. Heracles - not Hercules, stop grinning! - and Draco and Pegasus...look, there’s the Big Dipper.” All while he is talking he gestures with his hands, painting bold, flying lines with his fingers as he points overhead.

“I see it.”

“Above it - see it? - there’s another one, just past Draco’s tail. That’s the the Little Dipper. And the north star.” When he sees the confusion on her face, he sits up and scoots along his sleeping bag. “Come sit by me and I’ll show you.”

She obliges, unfurling long coltish legs and scrambles to sit by him. His sleeping bag is still covered with motes of graham crackers from the s’mores he had made earlier, despite Justin frowning down on any and all junk food. He wipes a seat clean and, when Elaine is shoulder to shoulder to him, he points again. “It’s almost right above us. Dad used to say that even if all the other stars spin in confusion, the north star was always going to be our steadfast companion.”

Elaine smiles slightly, following his gesture and the flickering golden shadows on his hand. Just beyond their copse and in another world completely there shines a distant star, as brightly burning as any other. She has never paid much attention to the night skies or, as Harry says, the stories written in the stars. Sure, there is magic in the night, but there is also coldness and darkness - which, she realizes with a start, are both being defeated by the gilded heat of the bonfire.

“You see it?”

“I see it.” She pauses. “Your dad told you a lot.”

“Yeah.” She looks at Harry and finds his face still turned up to the sky, a sad smile on his face. “He did. I miss him and his stories.” He suddenly rubs his nose, grinning. “What about your parents? Did they ever tell you a bunch of weird stories?”

Elaine finds that the nylon of the sleeping bag is suddenly far more interesting than the sky, and she runs her fingers across the material, biting her lip. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“You don’t-?”

“I think my parents died when I was six or seven. There was a car accident.” Her voice is soft and very quiet. Even though she realizes she’s speaking, she can feel her heart already distancing itself from the story that it has tried to ponder for almost half of her life. “I remember a lot of water, like a lake or a river or something. It was dark so it was probably at night. I couldn’t breathe and there was...I think there was someone else there...it was really cold. I knew how to swim, but I couldn’t _see_ anything - it was so dark - and I didn’t know which way was up. But the next thing I remember is waking up in a room and no one told me anything. Not about my parents or...anything.” The fabric of Harry’s sleeping cloth bunches in her fingers as she clenches her hand into a fist. “Nobody came for me.”

“Elaine-”

She scrubs at her eyes angrily when she feels the pinch of tears. The last thing she’s going to do is cry in front of _Harry_ of all people. “I’m just really mad that I can’t remember anything. And that no one was _there_. No grandparents, no aunts, no friends. I was alone and I didn’t remember anything and then they put me in the orphanage and it _sucked_.” The last word is spat out. “Justin’s helping us, but all I wanna do is remember. I mean, there had to be a time when I was...”

She stops and bites her tongue until she can taste the coppery taste of blood in her mouth.

_When I was wanted._

Harry doesn’t seem to know what to say and she furiously chides herself for letting her emotions get the better. She is jealous of Harry, of being able to remember those nightly trips with his father and being able to hear the stories. Harry’s mom never figured into any of his memories, but at least he still has his dad. She doesn’t have anyone and that hurts more than any of the teasing and bullying she had encountered for those two years.

She doesn’t even realize her shoulders are shaking until Harry puts an awkward arm around her. She stiffens immediately. While roughhousing and tickling and friendly punches are often thrown between them, a comforting touch never is and she hasn’t had such a touch in a very long time that her only reaction is to shy away from it. But when Harry doesn’t move his arm away, she gradually relaxes into the half hug and sniffs, the glow of the fire blurry from unshed tears.

They sit there in silence for several minutes, long enough for the moon to rise past the tops of the trees and fill the tiny clearing with pale silvery light. It is nowhere near as bright as the fire though and only serves to obscure some of the farflung stars in the sky.

“Hey.” Harry shifts next to her. “I was thinking...”

“Don’t hurt yourself.” Her voice is raspier than normal and she clears it. She doesn’t have much heart to tease him too mercilessly.

Harry snorts. “I was _thinking_ that everyone should have a north star.”

“There’s only one in the sky, Harry. Not everyone can copy a star and say it’s theirs.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” She can imagine his face scrunched up as he struggles to put his thoughts into words and is quietly impressed despite herself - it isn’t too often that Harry actually stops to think before he speaks. “I mean, like a constant companion. Someone who never goes anywhere, who stays steady even when everything else is going to hell around you. Like the north star.”

She sighs. “Stuff happens. Accidents happen. No one can stay with you forever.”

“Forever’s a long time,” he agrees and she can almost hear the grin in her voice. “I’d like to give it a shot. C’mon, Elaine. I’ll be yours if you’ll be mine. We’ve only got each other now.”

“What about Justin?”

“Yeah, Justin too. But this one is just between me and you, okay?”

“Because we’re friends?”

“Except when you yell at me. Then we’re not.”

“I don’t yell at you and even when I do, you deserve it!” She sits up from beneath his protective grasp and frowns at him, only to see that he’s still grinning wildly. She gazes at the fire for a moment, still unabashedly dancing in the cool night air, its red-orange sparks turned silvery-white in the light of the half moon. Then she purses her lips in an attempt not to smile and nods. “Okay fine. But you have to promise. No running off to God knows where because you heard there was something that needed to be on fire. We’re in this together.”

“But what if it really needed to be on fire?”

“Harry!”

“Okay! I promise! I wouldn’t have said anything if I wasn’t going to!” He shrugs. “Besides, since you don’t remember your stories, I’m going to have to share mine with you...if you won’t throw anything at me.”

She rolls her eyes and tosses another card at him, but he swats it away. They pull their sleeping bags half into the tent to watch the sky and the fire and the smoke and to listen to the distant noises of a world come to life at night. And when Harry finally begins telling another story, Elaine can only quietly listen as he makes _his_ stories _theirs_ and she falls asleep with images of rugged faraway lands and brave warriors, dragons and winged horses drifting through her mind.

 

oOo


	7. Le Diable

  
**7**   
**oOo | Le Diable | oOo**   


oOo

The sparrow sits outside the window in the late spring air, peering back at her with that same innocent, curious gaze that Elaine has attributed to most sparrows. It hops along the sill, ignored by everyone else in the classroom who have their heads down, concentrating on the test placed in front of them. Her test is long since finished with runes scrawled in the corner of the pages, beneath her name, and along the dotted lines.

(Her teacher think they mean nothing, but she knows better and Harry knows better and neither of them tells Justin.)

She lifts her pencil to her mouth, still watching the sparrow continue its undemanding journey along the sill, ruffling its feathers every minute or so. The windows of the room are open, much to the alarm of several students with allergies, who sniffle loudly in the wake of the scent of freshly-mowed grass. The low buzz of late spring activity – kids in gym class yelling and cheering in the courtyard, the roar of the lawnmower from just below the window, the telltale chirps of robins smart enough not to dally on the ledge – makes taking a history test nearly impossible, but Elaine has managed.

Harry is a seat ahead of her and off to her left. He must’ve finished the test around the same time she did because now he has his nose stuffed in a book – one of Wells’s from the looks of it – and is staying hunched behind the thick mass of one of the idiot bullies who has made both of their lives an irritating hell. She doesn’t bother trying to alert him with an intricately-folded note like the giggling girls behind her – that has failed before and ended up with them getting scolded in front of their classmates.

Instead, she frowns and puts a bit of will into her thoughts, _pushing_ the words out onto the air between them, a silvery channel unseen to anyone else. Unlike a note, she doesn’t have to see Harry snatch the message out of the air and she turns back to the sparrow, who has hopped an arm’s length away from her now.

_I’m bored._

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Harry jump a bit – he must really have been enthralled with his book – and she tries to hide the grin spreading across her face when she realizes he has turned to glare at her. She fails.

 _You could’ve warned me._ He pauses. _What did you get for number three?_

 _That’s cheating,_ she chides, smirking. _We’re not supposed to cheat using magic, Harry. Isn’t that what Justin has always told us?_

 _I thought he told us not to get caught, like this spell,_ Harry retorts with a mental sigh _._ She sees him flip a page in his book and has to marvel (to herself, of course) that Harry has the ability to carry a conversation, hold a spell, and read a book all at the same time _. I can’t believe we’re still here. And it’s hot. This some form of torture, I swear._

_I bet it’s not even seventy-five degrees._

_Unmitigated torture. Especially since we’re learning about _ _..._ , __he puts his book down to peer at his test paper _ _, _...Carthage. I hate Phoenicians.__ _

_Archangel._

_What?_

_Number three. The answer is Archangel. You’re on your own with the explanation though _ _.___ She turns back to her own paper, turning the sheet upside down and continuing to mark runes around the last question of the page. A few of the runes glow a deep, dark red but nothing that should alert any of the other kids in class (besides, their idea of magic runs along the ideas of Ouija boards and the Force). A single line, like a ribbon in water, twists and turns throughout each and every rune, connected them as the line smoothly runs straight or tangles itself into Celtic knots at each of the four corners.

Harry looks down at his paper _ _._ You sure? _

_I’m always sure, you dolt._

He audibly snorts and the huge boy in front of him throws a scowl over his shoulder. Harry ignores him, scrawling an answer across the paper _ _._ I’ll remember that next time we’re in science and you’re stuck with Ryan. He likes you, you know. _

She scowls and tries not to blush, lifting her pencil away from the intricate drawings on the paper lest she ruin the harmless charm _ _ _ _. _He does not. He just wants to get a passing grade in science and he’s always looking off my papers because I’m getting the answers from you. Maybe I should tell him you’re interested instead.__ ___

_The lady protests too much!_

_I’m never telling you the answers to anything ever again._

Harry snorts again just as the teacher rises from her chair, announcing that they have only a few minutes left before the bell rings and to hurry and finish with their last question before placing them on her desk. Elaine, who has long since learned the consequences of being one of the first students to finish, watches as several students, including the giggling girls behind her, stomp up to the desk and leave their tests behind. She keeps her head down as one of the girls, the one with the fiery red hair and apple lip gloss, purposely bumps a hip against her desk, sending her pencils over the edge _ _ _ _._ ___

“Oops,” the girl says brightly before continuing on her way. Elaine grits her teeth.

 _ _ _ _ _I could dump a bunch of green jello over her head if it makes you feel better._ ____ Harry reaches behind him to pick up her paper, flashing her a smile _ _ _ _. “____ You like green jello, right?”

She lifts a finger to her lips to shush him, smiling despite herself as he goes to drop the test papers off on the teachers’ desk. As he walks away, she thinks that it isn’t quite so fair that Harry is slowly but surely starting to catch up to her in height – he is still one or two inches shorter, but she thinks that the lost boy from four years ago is soon going to vanish into the wind. Justin’s training doesn’t really help matters – they’ve been facing strenuous exercises, both physical and magical, since last spring and...

Absently, Elaine rubs her wrist from where Justin had snapped the bone late last year during the Christmas holiday, forcing her to use her Sight for the first time on a crowd of shoppers. She still remembers, as clear as the sky on a cloudless winter day, the horror and beauty of what she had seen – the demons lurking behind the masks of humanity and the angels doing likewise. Even now, she is struck by the same lightheadedness from that day, which had sent lies spiraling out of her mouth to explain the broken wrist to Harry.

Now that most of the students have turned in their papers, a soft murmuring has filled the classroom despite their teacher’s stern, disapproving looks. One of the other students, snickering to his friend under his breath tries to trip Harry on the way back to his seat; he only steps over the outstretched foot, winking at Elaine as he does so. Elaine shakes her head in exasperation.

She turns her attention back to the sparrow that has retreated back along the edge to give her that curious look again, its head bobbing as if searching for food that couldn’t possibly be two stories above the ground. For the first time in the past hour, Elaine wonders why in the world the sparrow hasn’t flown off yet. From the few chirps that have come from it, she also wonders why it has yet to draw the attention of everyone else in the classroom _ _ _ _._ ___

She is about to shrug it off – class is almost over anyway – when she catches sight of someone just beyond the school grounds outside. The playground and track area are surrounded by a chain-link fence, but beyond that are hills and trees and streams and off-beaten roads that eventually give way to jagged blue mountains just beyond. But past the fence and near the stubborn cluster of bitterroots growing a few yards away from it is a girl with hair so pale a blond it is nearly white _ _ _ _.____

Elaine has only seen that shade once before in her life _ _ _ _._ ___

The bell rings, and Elaine feels as if she’s being pulled from a dream – she can’t even recall if she has truly seen a sparrow sitting on the ledge for the past hour. Harry is by her desk almost instantly, getting half-shoved and half-ignored by the other kids around them. She blinks up at him, her head still ringing from the bell. Harry’s smile slowly disappears into a concerned frown _ _ _ _._ ___

“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Elaine shakes her head. “No, I-” She has never told Harry about her, the mysterious girl from almost two years ago with Shakespeare dripping from her mouth and eyes the color of summer. She turns back to the window. The sparrow is gone and the girl...

_____I have to get outside._ _ _ _ _

“Can you wait for me in the library? I have to go somewhere first.” Harry tilts his head, watching her pack up her things in confusion.

“Huh? Elaine, what’s wrong?”

“Everyone else has left.” The teacher’s voice rings across the empty classroom and both Harry and Elaine glance guiltily towards their teacher, who is erasing the board. “Do you two need help with anything? Is there a reason you’re not at lunch?”

“I’ve just been so entranced by Phoenician and Roman politics, I am literally rooted to this classroom for the next interesting subject,” Harry replies immediately, with a disarming grin. The teacher glances at him suspiciously – the innocence that had marked him for so long is slowly giving way to teenage tenacity, and Elaine knows that the teachers are slowly growing exasperated with him.

“We were just leaving, ma’am.”

The teacher holds up one finger to stop them, returning to her desk and quickly flipping through the jumbled papers on it. Finding what she is looking for, she holds up one of the tests with a raised eyebrow – Elaine’s test, with its swirling runes and hieroglyphics and Celtic knots, tied together by a twisting line that spans the entire page.

Elaine feels Harry stiffen next to her, and she struggles to put on an embarrassed face – the teacher may see imaginative sketches, but she knows Harry has already figured it out the binding spell.

“Have you ever considered taking another art class, Elaine?”

Harry opens his mouth to say something, and Elaine quickly jabs her best friend in the ribs, grateful for that last inch or two that she still has on him.

“Um...no, ma’am. I was just bored because I finished my test early.”

_You are in so much trouble._

_Shut up, Harry _ _ _ _._ ____

“Well, you really should consider it.” The teacher peers down at the test. “We haven’t even covered Ancient Egypt in class yet and these hieroglyphics...Do you like to read about Egypt?”

_Why don’t you tell her that’s a spell for a binding? How in the world did you even manage those knots in less than an hour?_

_Shut_ up _ _ _ _ _,____ Harry _ _ _ _._ ____ “Sometimes. My foster dad reads about it sometimes. Can we go to lunch now?”

The teacher’s lips lift upwards in a half-smile. “You can, but I thought Harry was rooted here from his utter devotion to historical politics.”

Harry glances back at Elaine and then grabs her wrist, starting to pull her towards the door. “Well, I’m a heartbreaker like that. Leaving politicians in my wake, crying over the poor, charming Harry Dresden, and how they never knew someone as wonderful as he was.”

“Must have been what ended the Pax Romana,” Elaine grumbles under her breath, nearly getting dragged out the door. She can hear the teacher sigh behind them, and she wonders again if she really was the only one to see the tiny sparrow on the ledge.

The other kids have vanished towards the lunchroom judging by the noise. Harry begins to head that way until he realizes that Elaine has stubbornly planted her feet into the linoleum floor, a resolute look on her face. He looks back at her in bemusement, opening his mouth to say something. The words die between them as she shakes her head, pulling her hand out of his grasp. “I have to go check something outside.”

His brow wrinkles and despite the puzzlement clearly written on his face, she knows when his mind is quickly rearranging the pieces in his mind, solving the puzzle before anything else can be whispered into stories. He also probably sees the look of consternation in her eyes, and he nods, suddenly very solemn for a thirteen-year-old boy. “Do you want me to come with you?”

She hesitates for only a moment. After four years growing up together in a place that was not nor could ever be Neverland, Harry is the only one able to read her emotions as easily as the tales sprawled in his books. She eventually gives him a swift smile, shaking her head. “I’ll be alright. If anyone asks, cover for me.”

He snorts. “I thought _you_ were supposed to be the goody two-shoes.”

“We can’t all have detention all the time like you, Harry.”

He lets out a squawk of protest, but she only flashes him a smile before taking off down the hall, her sneakers echoing against the linoleum. The moment she has passed the classroom, she wraps the spell around her, a veil falling to lazily play with light and shadow and sound and render her a ghost haunting the corners. She isn’t sure if the veil is perfect yet – even after turning herself into the Invisible Girl for years, Justin is still never satisfied with the completed spell.

 _ _ _ _ _I should not be able to sense you are there at all_ , ____he always criticizes in that faint accent that she nor Harry have ever been able to place, even after the long and boring lessons at school. It’s always a blow to her pride, especially after she thinks she’s finally understood the little things about the spell that make it work. But at the end of the day, her veil is still not perfect and she hates that she has yet to impress Justin with her inherent skill.

However, at least for today, no one can see her and hear her. The side door to the school apparently opens on its own will, and Elaine bursts out into the late spring air. Her eyes immediately began to water as the perfumed scent of orchids and a fresh cut grass nearly suffocate her and only the lack of humidity floating upon the air keeps her from giving up the entire venture. She wrinkles her nose in determination and rounds the walkway spanning the school before sprinting across the playground and track field. She’s not sure if the spell is spiraling out around her and doesn’t really care – she knows what she’s seen and...

She scrambles over the fence and nearly slips in the gravel on the other side. The bitterroots are still there so where...?

“Hello, Rosalind.”

Elaine turns to find the girl standing further out by the trees beginning to march from the hills, brilliant green eyes visible even in the gray shadows. She can see even from a distance that the blond girl is smiling, as radiantly bright as the sun. Her voice is teasing. “Or shall I call you Miranda today, even without your Ferdinand?”

“Harry is _not_ my Ferdinand,” grouses Elaine. She knows _The Tempest_ well, better than any of Shakespeare’s other plays. Something about the words and the characters are written in ink across her heart for some reason she has never been able to decipher and try as she might to interest herself in other stories, they’ve never spun deliriously through her mind like the tale of the ousted duke. “And I’m not Miranda.”

The girl Aurora holds up on hand, shaking her head with a quiet, queenly amusement. “I’ve known many Mirandas. You, I think, are the most interesting.”

Elaine doesn’t know why, but she takes a step forward. Even now, years later, Aurora is still the mystery that Elaine can’t figure out and she _despises_ that fact. Equations are meant to have solutions, dynamics that just fit. Nothing is ever lost, nothing is ever broken – everything has a place and Elaine knows everything has a place and a reason. She still hasn’t figured out this girl’s place or reason and it bothers her. It has bothered her for almost two years.

She crosses her arms. “You’re not human. Are you like me and Harry?”

“Not your Prospero?” Aurora rebukes with that knowing smile. Elaine bristles for some reason.

“Justin is _different_. What are you?”

Green eyes sparkle in delight and in something impossibly...wrong. “Different.”

Exasperation quickly dies in Elaine’s mind and suddenly she’s aware that it’s much warmer than it should be, even with summer so quickly approaching. She knows her spell has unraveled, has felt it slowly unravel by impossibly delicate fingers, and the heat slowly sinks into her bones and blood. The vision of Aurora swims dizzyingly in front of her and she stumbles backwards.

“And why,” she manages to murmur stubbornly, “are you always seeking me out? First under the tree and now outside my school?”

Aurora stares at her and, despite the discomfort, Elaine somehow returns the gaze stubbornly. “I have told you before. You are interesting. And you remind me of someone I used to know.”

“But why-?”

“Thrice said and done.” Aurora holds up her hand and Elaine finds every word and thought dried up in her throat and mind. She nearly chokes, and the ancient magic – and that is what this was, magic older than hers and far different and it is a magic that kisses like the devil – binds her to her spot. “I said that we could be friends and I would spin the tale for you of the other Miranda. But even in these few years, you have gained and learned little. Unlike him.”

 _Him _ _ _.____ The nameless word causes her to shudder.

“One day,” Aurora muses, “I will tell you the story when you are no longer bound by the devil. I promise you on the summer to yet dawn that you will see the abysm of time.”

She tilts her head to the side, still watching Elaine curiously as if trying to see in her the other Miranda she has spoken of. Elaine shakes her head, trying desperately to shake away whatever image Aurora has imposed on her and the idea of being bound by the devil. She is not Miranda or some version of her, and there is _nothing_ about this riddle that makes sense.

 _Why _ _ _,____ she thinks in confusion _ _ _ _.___ And who is she? And Miranda...? _

She closes her eyes and lets the magic dissolve into nothing.

oOo

Later that night, she feels Justin’s eyes upon her, frowning.

Waiting.

oOo


	8. L’Empereur

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't often do these author notes, but I do feel the need to apologize. I have not abandoned this story, even if the six-month hiatus makes it seem so. This chapter gave me trouble for reasons unknown, and my schedule has been less than conducive to writing multi-chapter fics. Thanks for bearing with me.

**8**   
**oOo | L’Empereur | oOo**

oOo

“ _Fuego_!”

She barely has time to take one last desperate gulp of air before her world is consumed by a wall of crimson-gold flames, searing hot despite the fact that it is only magic and _not real_ and it seems as if she can’t even _breathe_ without inhaling flames. She throws her arm up - pointlessly - to protect her eyes from the blinding glare of the inferno, but she can still see in her mind’s eyes the small berth of time that she has to react. It feels as if every last drop of water has been pulled from her body, turning her into a spindly scarecrow ready to burst into flames at a moment’s notice.

Even though a few sparks alight on her head - and she can smell the scorched strands of hair even through the smoke - she doesn’t scream. She doesn’t panic. No, Justin would not approve. And it would have been useless anyway.

Instead, she _concentrates _,__ biting her tongue bloody as the flames seem to inch closer, every bit as malignant as real fire. She is sure that Justin is feeding into Harry’s magic, setting up this impossible cage for her to break free from. She is also positive that Justin won’t kill her - this is just a test. There are always tests like these. And she usually passes because she cannot and will not settle for anything less than near-perfect marks. Even as the flames steadily and hungrily crawl closer, destroying the very small space that is her only protection, she already has a spell on her lips _ _.__

 ___I come to answer thy best pleasure, be ’t to fly, to swim…to dive into fire._ __ She can’t shake the words out of her head and doesn’t even attempt to. The words of the bard are engraved into her memory ever since that last encounter with Aurora several weeks ago. _ __Dive into the fire. Build a shell. Against heat. Against smoke. Brick by brick. Layer upon layer._ _ _

Her focus - a simple bracelet made only of tiny copper links that had taken her ages to put together - grows uncomfortably warm around her wrist, but she squeezes her eyes tight and tries to ignore the encroaching fire and the smell of her own hair burning. She wonders, sometimes, if Harry ever thinks about what it would be like to burn to death. The screaming, sobbing agony of your skin and muscle melting from your bones...your nerves singed and blackened and scorched to numbness no matter how rawly you scream...your blood bubbling and boiling as it drips to the ground, superheated, one drop of life that you watch burn away. Nothing left but a charred husk.

 _Don’t panic. Dive into the fire. Layer by layer. Brick by brick_.

The barrier snaps into place.

She can still hear the fire and her own heartbeat pounding in her ears.

When the flames finally dry up, leaving her surrounded only by a thin ring of blackened grass, Elaine stumbles to her knees. An angry red line circles her wrist from where the bracelet had grown too hot, but she is too busy coughing and trying to take in huge gulps of fresh summer air. Harry is by her side almost immediately, swatting out the last bits of burning tendrils of hair. Elaine barely notices, blinking stinging tears from her eyes.

“A shield?”

Elaine feels Harry’s fingers clench into fists at her shoulders, and she looks up to see Justin approaching them, the same indecipherable frown on his face that he almost always wore. She nods wearily. “A shield.”

She can feel the judgment weighing on her shoulders, as heavy as the world atop Atlas. She looks back down at the bracelet on her burned wrist, noting belatedly that some of the links have melted together and she isn’t sure if it was because of the fire or her own magic.

“And if your shield had failed?”

Elaine’s jaw clenches around a biting retort - she knows it wouldn’t have failed - and replies, “It didn’t though.”

“I wasn’t asking you that.”

Elaine knows what he wants her to acknowledge, and it is the same fault that he has pointed out over other lessons such as these. But she only keeps her gaze lowered, trying to quell the frustration and disappointment and anger that is welling up in her. It isn’t her fault that she isn’t as much a heavy hitter as Harry - that sort of magic exhausts her. She has tried it before, against both Harry and Justin, and has only succeeded in being too exhausted to remain standing or to do much except sleep for almost an entire day afterwards. She could have retaliated with another form of magic, destroyed the source of the fire before it even came close to touching her, but she just didn’t trust herself not to kill herself in the process.

“It’s not even _fair_ ,” she hears Harry say over her shoulder. She throws him an irritated look because she doesn’t need him defending her and he, of course, ignores the look. “I wasn’t trying to make the flames go that high. You could have really hurt her!”

“Do you think that I am a novice, Harry? That this is the first time I have ever controlled fire?”

“That’s not the point!”

“It is, more than you know.”

 _I wouldn’t’ve gotten hurt_. She knows Harry has heard her because he starts ever so slightly. Justin is only a few feet away and she knows he’s giving Harry that disapproving look that usually seems reserved only for Harry, and she doesn’t want Justin to hear them bickering. _I don’t need you to protect me_.

 _You didn’t see the fire like I saw it. You could have been hurt real badly_!

 _But I wasn’t. I’m fine_. And Elaine stubbornly closes off the channel that she and Harry always use to communicate, shrugging out of his touch and rising shakily but stubbornly to her feet. Harry follows suit and she gets the feeling that he’s around two seconds away from gripping her arm to make sure she doesn’t fall. She turns away from him slightly. She doesn’t want to appear weak in front of Justin, to reinforce the idea that she still isn’t as good as Harry.

“I’ll do better next time,” she finally says, rubbing at the burn on her wrist.

“Will you?”

“I _will_.” There is an edge of irritation in her voice, and Justin’s disapproving look melts into something she can’t quite read. Harry nudges her in the side and she can almost hear him trying to shout past the barrier she has put up in her mind. But she has forged a wall so strong, he can’t bypass it - that sort of magic, she is very good at.

A long moment of silence reigns over the three of them. Then, Justin murmurs, “Harry. Please go back to the house and bring out the bag next to the door.”

“But-”

Eyes still on Elaine, Justin turns his head slightly towards Harry. “I will not repeat myself, boy.”

Elaine can feel the tug of Harry’s stubbornness, the unwillingness to just listen and _go_. She can feel his eyes on her, unspoken concern and irritation weighing on her like a second skin. But the moment passes as a breeze and she hears him turn away, longs legs that are still not _quite_ as long as hers eating up ground. The silence that falls back on Elaine’s shoulders is heavy, awkward even. She doesn’t meet Justin’s eyes - she never really has, not in the almost four years since he’s been her adoptive father. She knows what will happen if she meets Justin’s eyes.

What she doesn’t know if she’s just too uncaring to look...or too scared.

Finally, Justin crosses his arms, letting out a long sigh. “We’ve had this conversation many times, Elaine. You are still hiding behind those barriers I found you behind when you were a child. You’ve still not learned to fight back.”

She bites her tongue so hard that she can taste the metallic tinge of blood in her mouth. She’s not a coward, but it sounds like a condemnation anyway.

“Elaine, this isn’t a game.” He sounds disappointed, and that stings more than any rebuke ever could. “What I teach you and Harry...it is about survival. It is about ruling your surroundings so those who cannot and will not understand what sort of gifts you possess can never take advantage of you. If you don’t fight back, you’ll be at the mercy of the monsters of the world. And from what I’ve seen of you these past several months, they would tear apart your defenses and leave you broken on the ground. Is that what you want, Elaine? Do you want to be so easily defeated by those who should not be able to stand up against you in the first place?”

She feels heat creep up her neck, and she clenches her fists at her side. “No.”

“Are you sure? You’ve been nothing but lackluster for awhile now. If you don’t care for my tutelage or find me cruel, I can take you back to the shelter where I found you. And there you can continue to disappear until no one even realizes you were there at all.” She can hear the frown in his voice, the careful coldness that seeps any of the pride she had in her barrier away into nothing. “When you were young, you hid behind Harry. Do you remember? With the wasps’ nest?”

She doesn’t trust her voice. She only nods.

“Then there was the fire. We tried many times with that. But nearly every lesson I’ve taught Harry, you’ve never been able to catch on to as quickly. I thought at first it was because you did not have his innate talent for evocation. And it is true that you have a firmer understanding of the delicacies of magic. However…” He trails off, but Elaine can’t bring herself to look up at him. Each word was a painful stab directly into her heart, into her pride. She has always hated being compared to Harry, even when she is the one doing the comparing. Hearing it from Justin is a thousand times worse.

She doesn’t even notice Justin walk towards her until she finds, in surprise, that he is crouching on one knee in front of her and peering up at her. She cannot hide any emotions beneath her curtain of hair, but the only expression on her face, she knows, is surprise. She remembers, several years ago, looking up at Justin as some sort of impossible savior, the pirate with the green fire that saved her from the orphanage. Looking down at him now, she realizes that not much has changed about him physically. There was and still is a bit of mystery and magic surrounding him that Elaine finds entrancing, no matter how many harsh criticisms he sends her way.

Right now, she etches his face into memory, comparing it to the face of four years ago. Still handsome, still roguish in that swashbuckling manner. His eyes (no, she shouldn’t look too long into his eyes) were dark and crinkled at the corners in thought. It is at that moment that Elaine, for the first time, wonders exactly how old their foster father was. Certainly older than her and Harry, but how much older? Old enough to have children their age? Older? It’s hard to tell and she tears her eyes away before Justin realizes how much she is staring.

“No, don’t do that. Look at me, Elaine.”

She is reluctant to look back at him. Maybe there is disappointment etched on his face now. Or anger. But she can’t ignore a direct request and she looks back, still keep her eyes stubbornly downcast.

“Harry is rubbing off on you,” Justin murmurs, and Elaine isn’t sure if that’s a note of disapproval or amusement in his voice. He isn’t smiling though. “But perhaps much of this is my fault. While I had hoped you would equally Harry in sheer force, I should have seen that your talents lie elsewhere. He is brute force, but you - you are grace. Subtle. Delicate.”

“I’m _not_ delicate,” she retorts almost instantly, ire flaring within her at the mere idea of being compared to something like a flower or a poofy princess. If Harry had been here, she would have been appalled.

This time, Justin does give her that rare faint impression of a smile. “In your magic, you are. It is why veils and shields come so easily to you. So now we are going to try something different.” He gently reaches for her wrist (and she remembers that this is the same one he broke during her first soulgaze) and spins her so that her back is facing him and she is looking away from unburned slopes towards the blue mountain peaks and the crawling sprawl of forest that hides their home.

It is still beautiful, she thinks. Different from the desert of the southwest, but she has grown used to it in the past several years. She probably takes it for granted, but then again she really has nothing to compare it too except the desert and the darkness of the years beyond that. She scrunches up her nose. “What am I supposed to do?”

He doesn’t let go of her wrist, but his proximity for some reason makes her a little nervous. Justin isn’t that sort of dad, not the kind that gives reassuring hugs or gentle pats of affection. But he is holding her wrist gently but firmly, extending her arm out in front of her to point towards the mountains. She shifts uncertainly, burned grass crackling underneath her sneakers. The clouds are rolling now and she is sure that a summer storm is going to come thundering over the mountains soon.

“Do you trust me, Elaine?”

Justin readjusts his hold on Elaine’s wrist so that he forces her hand open, and she can only frown. He hasn’t told her what to do, and is this just going to be another test that she is set up to fail? Something hot burns in the pit of her stomach and she clenches her jaw against the sudden tightness in her throat at the thought.

And just when she is about to ask again, green fire erupts in her hand.

She inhales sharply and tries to backpedal away from the emerald flames that have encompassed her entire hand, but Justin is still kneeling directly behind her and she finds herself trapped. She tries to break free from Justin’s grip, already beginning to panic as the fire licks up her forearm. The other fire - Harry’s fire - had only encroached on her, but it had not begun to crawl up her skin like a promise of death. Justin is saying something but she can’t hear him over the sound of her own heartbeat thundering loudly in her ears. She had thought - no, but she wouldn’t dare dream of it...burning to death...screaming...flesh melting from bones…

She feels a firm, reassuring hand on her lower back.

“Elaine. _Look_.”

The two words break through her haze of panic, and she struggles to calm herself and look unwillingly at the fire that has turned the entire world a vibrant, blazing green. She expects to see charred skin and blood, perhaps muscle dripping away from exposed bone. But...there is none of that. Not even Justin’s hand around her wrist.

Instead...

The green flames still lick hungrily up her arm, but they don’t burn. She stares in wonder, bending her arm to peer at the strangely-colored fire that coats her arm like a gauntlet. And just beneath the flames she can see that there is a thin slip of space between her skin and the heart of the flames themselves - a shield. But even this close to her face, the fire doesn’t burn.

She turns her head to peer at Justin in confusion. He only shakes his head. “The fire will grow. Stop it.”

“But-”

“If you care for one flame to catch your clothing, then let it continue to rage. If not, you need to eliminate the threat.”

 _But it’s yours_! she wants to cry. And it has been so long since she has seen this fire, she is torn between nostalgia and fear. She furrows her brow in consternation. He caused the flames to grow last time - what’s going to stop him from doing the same again?

“Elaine. _Elaine_.” His voice is soft, steady. “Trust me.”

 _Trust me_.

She blinks, even as one particular tendril of fire snakes its way a little higher up her arm, only a few inches from the sleeve of her t-shirt. Trust. Trust him. Does she trust him? With what? With her life? Is he just trying to prove a point? Or something else?

He always says that she and Harry are destined for great things, but he has a funny way of preparing them for it. But..but...even in his frustration, he didn’t give up on her. He didn’t send her away even though she is sure, so many times, that she had proven to be a disappointment.

 _Trust me_.

She clenches her jaw.

“Okay.”

She concentrates. Attempting to crush the flames with air and oxygen would send them spiraling out of control. And she is afraid is she layers another shield atop the flames, she’ll only create a pressure so strong she’ll break her arm (her wrist throbs at the memory). She nervously swipes a long strand of hair behind her ear, but a few strands that had been singed in the previous inferno refuse to cooperate. She remembers hearing the hiss of burning hair just over the roar of flames, the bright golden-red that sparked as her hair burned into nothing. Like air, it would have fed the fuel if any more of the flames had landed on her head--no.

Not like air.

She only knows one spell that would work and she has never tried to reverse its effect. But she thinks - she hopes - she understands the basic principles behind it so that she can tweak it to work. She watches as the flames crawl higher up her arm and she knows that she only has seconds to work this spell before her shirt catches fire, and she begins to burn in Justin’s arms.

 _Trust me_.

She takes a deep breath. This is gonna work. It has to work. And then, intensely, she murmurs, “ _Tjaw. Djah_.”

 _Breath_. _Wind_.

She doesn’t smother the fire - she only draws away its fuel, its breath. Oxygen. Justin is its source of fuel and even though he had demanded earlier why she hadn’t simply taken out the source, she knows she can’t do that. She can’t go up against Justin, not without expecting some very painful consequences. And the heat is beyond her - the moment she allows herself to feel it, she knows she will panic. So she crushes it the only way she knows how.

She suffocates it.

The fires don’t respond at first. But Elaine only presses her lips into a thin, determined line before repeating the words again. Tjaw, djah. She will not burn. She has found a way around the trick. And even if she is destroying the childhood memory of fire, she knows that it will keep her alive. Not everything can be controlled - she doesn’t dare try to take over the fire herself - but things can be altered. Influenced. Take away its source of living, and anything can be destroyed.

She watches, fascinated, as the flames shrink...and splutter..and then the only thing coalescing around her arm is pale wispy smoke. She examines her arm closely, running her hand from wrist to elbow. Her skin isn’t even hot to the touch. She had guarded herself...and she had taken out the threat. Just...maybe not in the way Justin had originally envisioned.

She looks over her shoulder at him, finds that he is examining her arm as well.

And then he looks up at her and smiles.

(When Harry eventually wanders back twenty minutes later with a baseball bat and a bag full of baseballs, he asks her why she looks so funny. She punches him in the arm.)

(It’s a less painful bruise when compared to the rest of the day, she thinks.)

 

oOo

That night, for the first time in a very long time, Elaine dreams of drowning.

And, for the first time in a very long time, she dreams that she doesn’t die. A hand reaches out for her and there is a familiar face that she should recognize but doesn’t.

There is a voice whispering, “See through the mirror, child. Don’t drown in the fire.”

But it is a comforting voice, one that she knows and she falls into blissful slumber.

 

oOo


	9. La Force

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After last chapter, it seemed that I was ready to start with regular updates again. Unfortunately, life, as it has been known to do, happened and a con across the country, a new job and a bad car accident all occurred within two months of each other. That obviously set me back creatively, and this chapter languished because of it. I apologize to anyone who has read this and was left wondering if I had abandoned this story - the answer is no. I intend to finish this, come hell or high water, and I hope you enjoy the several remaining chapters of this story. Thanks again!
> 
> (And, if all else fails, you can always find me skulking about on Tumblr.)

  
**9  
oOo | La Force | oOo**

oOo

“You’re late.”

Harry makes a face at her, swinging his backpack off his shoulder and dumping it into the sand at his feet. He doesn’t move to sit on the empty swing next to her so she continues her slow spin, watching the cool metal links slowly twist around into finger-pinching knots. Tiny sparks of greenish-white light bounce off the chains and rain down into her hair and lap, but the magic doesn’t bother her and no one is looking anyway. She scuffs the toes of her sneakers in the sand as she tries to make one last revolution before the dizzying unwind. “ _Why_ are you late?”

Harry sighs. “I disagreed with the science teacher.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Disagreed?”

“Argued. He said I had a smart mouth. I took it as a compliment.”

“Did you get detention again?”

“Maybe.”

“ _Harry_...”

Harry crosses his arms, giving her an amused look that doesn’t quite melt the not-so-reprimanding look off her face. “Now listen here Miss Perfect - I remember _someone_ getting a week’s worth of detention for shoving his syllabus into superheated potassium chlorate. Mouthing off isn’t a chemical offense.”

Elaine can feel the slow smile start to spread across her face, and she screws up her mouth in a vain effort to let Harry know that she is not that amused. “How long have you been waiting to make that absolutely horrible pun?”

“Since man invented the wheel.” He finally sits down on the swing next to her, absently beginning to rock back and forth. “Have I said how much I hate this school?”

Elaine makes a noise of agreement - they’ve talked about their shared disgust for their new home, long into the night. Nothing is comfortable anymore, not since Justin uprooted them from the blue shadows of the mountainous regions of Montana. The jagged horizons of a half-decade’s worth of memories vanished into the rolling green and gold plains of the Midwest, the quiet solitude of the chalet swallowed up by the small unimpressive bungalow that sits on the very edge of the most-backwards town in the state. Justin has never told them why, and all of their attempts to question him about him fall on deaf ears save for a cryptic “sometimes you have to move on.”

She lets the twisted chains slowly unfurl, her spin slowed down by a toe firmly planted into the sand beneath her. She doesn’t love the new house, but the one good thing about it is that she and Harry’s rooms are now right across the hall from each other instead of on opposite sides of the house. It’s much easier to sneak out of her room at night, a book tucked under one arm and a blanket thrown over her shoulders like a patchwork cape. She’s lost track of the nights she has stayed in Harry’s room (or vice versa) until the darkest hours of the morning, reading or talking or playing card games. It’s a small consolation but one she treasures.

School, though, is never easy.

She glances over at Harry. He’s taller than her now, much to her annoyance. The past school year saw him shoot up several inches, and Elaine thinks that it’s not fair that he probably hasn’t stopped growing either. Still, his height is probably the only thing that keeps him from getting a black eye on a weekly basis. She kicks some sand over his shoes. “Did you see the clones today?”

“Yeah. I was hoping their combined stupidity would lead them to walk off a cliff, thinking there was Pepsi at the bottom.” He rubs his left forearm absently, and Elaine already knows there’s probably a bruise forming there. She had heard about two of the clones shoving him around the locker room and that a teacher had been right there before Harry could start throwing punches back.

_One of the few times the dumb teachers actually did something_ , Elaine thinks, letting the greenish-white sparks of magic fade into the sand at her feet. It doesn’t help that she and Harry had transferred in the middle of the school year, or that they were used to Justin’s methods of teaching. Compared to that, everything in school is too easy and mind-numbingly boring. And the other kids...she wrinkles her nose. In the locker rooms, the girls all talked about movie stars and cosmetics and what boys were cute. Elaine always ignores them and, in turn, the teachers always seem to turn a blind eye to the bullying.

She kicks more sand over Harry’s shoes. “You should’ve called for backup.”

“Like Gondor?”

She snorts, leaning back in her swing. “I don’t get your obsession with those books.”

“I could say the same with you and Shakespeare,” Harry laughs, hunkering down in his swing. A slight breeze ruffles his dark hair, and Elaine is almost tempted to reach over and pat it back down into place. The urge only increases when he runs an absent hand through it. “But yeah. You’re not gonna tell Justin, are you?”

“You didn’t tell about me and potassium chlorate. I think this makes us even.” She leans further back so that she can peer up at the late spring sky, as blue and clear as the glacial mountains back home...back in Montana. She can feel the tip of her ponytail trail into a high mound of sand beneath her, and ignores it. She wrinkles her nose, peering up at the expanse of sky that is unthreatened by the presence of ragged mountain peaks. “Only another week left, at least.”

“Not really. Justin probably will have us try to run across the entire country during summer break.” Elaine rolls her eyes and even though Harry has his back to her, she knows that he senses it because he grins. “Maybe you might actually beat me for once.”

She sits up so fast she nearly falls off the swing. “Excuse me? First of all, your legs are like five billion miles long, you jerk. Second of all, you _cheat_ and take shortcuts.”

“That just means I’m clever.”

“You’re something and clever isn’t the word.”

Harry has the decency to look somewhat appalled. “Now that was just rude. Not very ladylike of you.” 

She half-twists her swing and playfully kicks at him. “Since when have I ever been a lady? I’ve beaten you up more times than I can count, idiot.” It’s not entirely a lie - she has yelled at him, boxed his ears, and used rather nasty electrical spells against him when he has irritated her to the point of anger. And Harry, being Harry, doesn’t fight back - well, he has thrown a pillow at her a time or two and Justin is usually never very happy about the chaos of feathers that appears because of it.

“That’s because I let you.”

“Whatev--”

“Hey, look. It’s the freaks!”

Elaine turns before she can stop herself, the cold crawl of annoyance already beginning to slip down her spine. Harry straightens and looks up too. Approaching them from behind are a trio of the clones - the clique of kids from their class that have apparently made it their life’s mission to make Elaine and Harry’s lives as miserable as possible. She isn’t even sure if they’re jocks or the most popular kids in school or what (she can’t really tell them apart anyway), but they have made it more than clear that outsiders were not welcome.

Stupid small towns.

“Heard you got detention again, Harry,” one of the two boys says (Elaine thinks his name his Kevin...or it could be Scott or Thomas or Jason or something else stupid like that). He leans against one of the supporting poles of the swing set. “Hope your girlfriend isn’t too mad at you.”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” Elaine snaps at them, the same time Harry retorts with a sarcastic, “Thank god. I was almost afraid your hearing had gone the same way of your brain cells.”

“Aren’t you guys, like, brother and sister anyway?” the girl (Heather? Tiffany?) asks, smacking her gum loudly. “That’s so _gross_.” Her red hair is feathered and teased to within an inch of its life, and Elaine is reminded of a few weeks earlier when one of the girl's friends had tried to stick a wad of bubblegum into Elaine’s golden-brown hair. Only another student’s ill-timed snort alerted her of the prank just behind her and had kept her from having to chop off all of her hair to get rid of the sticky substance. 

At the time, she hadn’t accused any of them - they’d have only batted their eyes and professed innocence anyway. The teacher hadn’t seen a thing anyway and the teachers always take their side anyway, thinking Harry and Elaine to be the outcasted troublemakers.

It isn't fair.

“That’s because they’re freaks,” the second boy says, drawing out the last word in a singsong. “That’s why they never hang out with anyone. They think they’re too good for everyone but they’re actually just lame.”

The girl giggles. “Oh my god, you're right.” She gives them a mocking glance over. “Like, I know your dad or whatever he is...he’s super weird or whatever...but can he at least afford to buy you guys clothes that don’t make you look pathetic? I feel sorry for you guys.”

“Careful. Wouldn’t want you to overload your brain with emotion,” Elaine snaps back at her, more irritated than insulted. Neither she nor Harry follow the fads and trends most of the kids in their junior high, and neither of them _want_ to. It is stupid and silly, and they just don't have time anyway. Besides, asking more from Justin would just be pointless and maybe a little intimidating and if that meant they had to live in jeans and t-shirts so be it.

“Don’t you guys have some kittens to kick into the street? A grandmother to push down some stairs?” Harry slowly rises away from the swing, and Elaine watches with a satisfied frown as the two boys shift slightly away from him. Harry is still the tallest boy in their class, no matter what the other kids say or do. Sure, he’s super gangly, more skin and bones than actual muscle, but his height is just enough to be intimidating.

Elaine doesn’t stand. She keeps her fingers curled around the cool links of the swing, glaring at all three of them and wishing she could hit one of them with a binding spell. _That_ would shut them up. “We should just go. They’re a waste of time.”

“I bet that’s what your parents said about you guys.” The first boy sniggers, mistaking the sudden blankness in their faces as shock. “What, you thought no one would figure it out? You guys are probably from one of those big cities where all the kids are in the system, aren’t you? That’s why you’re in love with each other. Because even your parents didn’t want you so you’ve got to get some love from your sister, right? Man, that’s just-”

Harry punches him.

The resounding sharp crack is followed by only a heartbeat of silence. The second boy only hesitates a second before tackling Harry into the sand while the first boy hollers murder, hands cupped over his nose as blood drips scarlet between his fingers. Elaine jumps up from her swing, shouting Harry’s name. The other girl is shrieking one of the boys’ names (at least Elaine now knows that one of them is Dylan), but Elaine ignores her, launching herself at the two wrestling boys and tangling her fingers in Dylan’s (or not) shirt. He continues to try to pummel Harry, but she and Harry have learned from Justin. They know how to take and when to block most punches.

Something begins to burn hot and furiously in her heart. None of them have _any_ right. They are so weak and dumb and narrow-minded and how would they even _begin_ to know anything about her or Harry? She isn’t exactly weak but Dylan (or not) has at least seventy pounds on her and is unrelenting. The other Dylan (or not) continues to curse and splutter and threaten in the background while the girl screams shrilly at everyone. 

Elaine shuts them out, shuts them out as she always shuts them out, and wraps her fingers around the heavy boy’s bicep. She grits her teeth even as she takes an elbow to the ribs and meets Harry’s eyes for a brief moment. He must see the resolution in her eyes because his eyes widen slightly and she knows he is going to rebuke her but Elaine doesn’t _care_...

This isn’t right. They don’t understand. None of them understand and…

Her nails sink into the other boy’s skin. “ _Ka. Sheut. Sheni._ ”

She doesn’t need theatrics. She was always so much more subtle than Harry. 

The spell sinks into the boy’s skin and muscle, and she can feel him start to go limp beneath her touch. Even as he sinks to the ground, she whips her gaze around towards the other two and wordlessly hits them both with a body bind. It’s not very strong but they’re stupid and they’ll never figure out. The girl’s mouth drops into a perfect pink circle and Elaine spits out the same words from before.

“ _Ka. Sheut. Sheni._ ”

Harry pushes the heavier boy off of him. Dylan (or not) rolls onto his back, staring glassy-eyed and confused up at the sky. His two friends have the same blank stare, and no one makes a move to stop Harry as he sits up on his elbows. Elaine rocks back onto her heels, the weight of the spell sitting heavily on her shoulders. She wants to reach forward and wipe the blood from Harry’s split lip but stops when Harry gives her a confused but accusing look.

“What did you _do_?”

“I _stopped_ them. You’re welcome.” When Harry’s look darkens, she scowls. “They were dumb.”

“We’re not supposed to use magic like that. It’s wrong.”

“I didn’t _hurt_ them, Harry. In a couple minutes, they’ll be back to normal. Won’t even remember anything.” She doesn’t understand why he’s upset. Justin always told them that they were so much better than everyone else and it wasn’t right for some stupid classmates to talk about them like that. And she has been careful - her spell is going to wear off and they’d be just as useless and shallow as ever. “Why are you angry with _me_? You punched that idiot first.”

“Yeah but I didn’t use magic on him. You can’t _do_ that, Elaine!”

She narrows her eyes at him. He’d _started_ the stupid fight and she had ended it without any violence. And he probably doesn't even want to admit that they deserve it. She stands, mentally cursing the shakiness of her legs, and grabs her backpack, swinging it viciously over her shoulder. “Whatever, Harry. Do what you want next time. Just let them keep talking about us. We’re just freaks, right?”

“That’s not-!”

She turns on her heel and storms off towards home, ignoring Harry’s shouts behind her.

oOo

Elaine hasn’t left her room all evening by the time Justin silently enters and stands as foreboding as a shadow by her door. When the door closes when a definitive click behind him, he says in a faintly disapproving tone, “I’d have expected you to leave these childish displays of stubbornness behind, Elaine. Explain yourself.”

She has curled up beneath a faded blue-and-white quilt, quietly reading _Macbeth_ , too angry to even attempt homework. She’d usually go across the hall to Harry’s room or he to hers but the bitter silence has lasted past the late hours of the afternoon and into the evening. She doesn't know and doesn't care if Harry is angry with her - she simply does _not_ want to talk to him anytime soon. If he thinks she is so wrong...well, fine. He can fight his own battles in the future, see if she cares.

But she isn’t sure how to tell Justin any of that and she only averts her eyes back to the pages in front of her. She can almost feel the heat of his gaze on her, and she furrows her brow in annoyance. Can’t he just scold her and go away? Harry’s probably told him everything anyway.

The silence, heavy to the point of being a physical thing, stretches on between them. Elaine doesn’t try to rein in her stubborn flare, even knowing that she will regret it later. She reads the same line at least a half dozen times, silently gripping the book with growing tension. What does he even want from her? A confession? Denial? Accusations? She knows that _he_ knows the truth - Justin has always been good at that. Once, she speculated that it was magic and now she knows it may be something more. She bites her lips together, a strand of hair that has escaped her ponytail obscuring the corners of her book. There’s always something more with Justin.

To her surprise, the man who was once a pirate in her eyes approaches at the silence, sitting quietly on the edge of her bed. In the gold shadows tossed by her lamp, she can almost see the ghost of the green fire in his eyes from so many years ago, pinpricks of flame that would unfurl around her a world of magic. It hasn’t been that simple though, and the green flames of recent memory still haunt her nightmares. She averts her gaze quickly - she has never soulgazed Justin, has never wanted to. There are some monsters under her bed that she wants to pretend don’t exist.

“Something happened at school. What was it?” There is a thread of steel in his voice, and Elaine knows there’s no point in arguing or lying. He’d know if she was. She lowers her gaze back to her book, the words waltzing together in a tormenting blur.

“Just some other kids,” she replies quietly.

The silence again. Her skin prickles uncomfortably and after a moment she stops pretending to read about the witches and the treachery and the blood-soaked daggers and lays the book down, the pages flipping to conceal her reading spot. Still, she doesn’t know how to explain to Justin what she has done without incurring his wrath. How many times has he said that their magic is their most-closely guarded secret, the one that they must take with them in all silence to the grave? What would he do if he knew she had willing used a spell to quiet their tormentors at school? 

Justin reaches across the bed, picking up the abandoned book. Even in the dimness, his warmth so incredibly close to her, the roguish darkness of her childhood memories still surrounds him. He is still an enigma to her, a wizard of shadows and secrets, and she is never sure whether she is going to fly or burn around him.

“Macbeth. This is not your usual fare, Elaine.”

“I’ve read all the plays.” She picks at the frayed edge of her quilt. What does it matter? “It’s not like I have a favorite. They’re just stories.”

“No, I wouldn’t expect you to have a favorite. Sometimes I believe you’ve grown to be too logical for sentiment.” He pages through the heavy book and its worn pages, and she doesn’t wonder if the words mean anything to him. “It begs the question, however, of why Prospero’s tale seems to fascinate you so.”

Elaine flushes. She has never actually admitted her draw to _The Tempest_ because it would seem like a wild childish dream. She can’t even begin to explain and she keeps her eyes focused on the quilt. “It’s just a story.”

“One that you seem fond of.”

“I’ve read all of them.”

“Yet it is this one you return to more than any of the others.” He places the book back down on the bed, a frown on his face. “I shouldn’t be surprised. Your father had a love for this story as well.”

For a moment, the world is as still as night. Elaine looks up at him, feeling the confusion and surprise crawl across her face like a gust of cold air and just as unfeeling. She must not have heard him correctly...right? “My...dad? Did...did you know...?”

Justin is quiet for a moment and Elaine can feel her breath and her heartbeat fighting for the dominance in the knot in her throat. Then he lets out a sigh that is impossible to place and says, “I knew him. Just as I knew Harry’s mother, many years ago.”

_He knew Harry’s mom too? But..._ She feels something heavy being simultaneously lifted and pressed onto her thin shoulders, the harsh words of the other kids ringing clearly in the back of her mind. Her tongue feels heavy and awkward in her mouth, but she manages at least a few words, however garbled. “But...you knew both of them? How? When? Did they...were they like us? My parents..." Memories that had turned to ash with age swim at the edge of her memory - darkness, cold, water above her head and she can’t breathe - and she snaps an accusing glare at him. “Why didn’t you _tell_ us?”

“And what would it have changed, Elaine?” Justin’s voice is firm, sharp as a whip and scattering the memories as effectively as the crack of a real one. There is no heat or annoyance in his voice but her next words die on her lips. She can’t meet his eyes directly but she sees his look soften, just barely, and for one of the few moments she can remember, he looks more prince than pirate. “They are all long dead. Their memory would serve as nothing but a distraction, a hindrance to your potential.”

“You…” Her brow furrows. She’s angry and frustrated, can feel heat burn at the edge of her mind from something that scorches more hotly than fire. The prince is more a lie than the pirate ever was. “You don’t have the _right_ to decide that. What if I _wanted_ to remember my mom and dad instead of always wondering what if?”

“But you can’t.” He doesn’t catch the ghost of her denial - it dissipates before she can utter a sound. “I know about you, Elaine. I know that there is very little that you can recall before you awoke in that hospital. And for a very long time, the memories you could recall tormented you. But you’ve grown out of that. You learned to live your life without the distractions of those memories and they’ve let you alone for a very long time.”

She doesn’t want to admit that he’s right. She can barely stand the knot that her stomach has twisted into, but she knows he’s right. The dreams had served her no purpose and she had eventually banished them into the darkest corners of her mind. She hasn’t thought of the cold, watery depths in years. But...but…

At her silence, Justin shakes his head. “You may think of me as stern, Elaine. But I’ve taught you to focus. This world is not kind to those with sentimentality.” He gestures to her book. “And if you and Harry have learned anything from me, it is never to dwell in the past. The present requires your attention, the future your forethought. Regret binds you. Nostalgia chokes you with its delusions. And years can paint the past false. There is nothing to be gained with that sort of longing...especially when the present confounds you.”

“It doesn’t.” She clinches her fists. “I know what you’ve taught me.”

“Yet you stubbornly refuse to tell me of your use of magic at school today.” He holds up a hand even as betrayal washes into her face. “It wasn’t Harry. But do you think I am that much a fool that I wouldn’t see past your pretense? Subtlety is your forte but you are not a full-fledged wizard yet, Elaine, and you should never believe that you are. In fact, your actions today only prove that you still have much to learn.”

He rises then, his words still ringing like a condemnation in her ears. As he reaches for the handle of her door, she quietly asks the only thing she can think to ask.

“But I was right, wasn’t I?”

She thinks she imagines the smile on his face.

“A sparrow is no hawk, but it is still better than those that can’t fly.” The door closes behind him.

Two hours later, she crosses the hall to Harry’s room. She stands outside the door, frowning hesitantly at the dark stain of wood and cursing herself for her doubt. It’s not like she has anything to apologize for, not really. Hadn’t Justin said as much? It isn’t like she enjoys being thought of as a sparrow but at least she feels a little more justified in her actions. 

But Harry...well, he’s a self-righteous idiot and deserves a good punch to the face but he’s still _Harry_ and her only friend. Justin may be a jerk for not at least telling them they he knew their parents but maybe he’s right about not wallowing in the past, even the most recent past. Still, she grits her teeth. _You threw the first punch so why do I have to apologize?_

She isn’t sure whether she’s about to raise her first to knock or turn around and head back to her room but the door opens before she can decide. Harry nearly collides with her but Elaine jumps back just in time. _He looks ridiculous_ , she thinks. He has a bruise fading from his right temple into his hairline though his dark hair is disheveled enough to distract from it. He’s tall and pale and gawky and wearing a stupid Wookie t-shirt and she doesn’t know if she wants to laugh or kick him and she wonders for a moment if he looks more like his mom or his dad...

She settles for crossing her arms and not saying a word.

Harry gives her a look. “Don’t even. You were coming to apologize too.”

“What if I was?” When Harry’s brow furrows, she purses her lips. “Fine. I was. But so were you.”

Elaine watches as his jaw clenches in irritation, realizing that he’s probably trying to bite back a sarcastic comment. Well, maybe that’s more than she deserves. He doesn’t even try with anyone else. “I didn’t mean to make it sound like I agreed with them. About the freaks thing. But we’re not supposed to use magic to hurt people.”

“I didn’t hurt anyone!” she snaps back at him, the moment of cautious optimism disappearing with the accusation. “I kept you from getting your skull bashed in!”

“Well, thanks for that.” He glares down at her and at that moment she despises their height difference more than anything else in the world. “But I think you left your integrity back at school in the process. Maybe we should go back and pick it up.”

“You ass.” She jabs a finger into his chest, pushing him back just enough. “Only thing that was left there was your dignity. Sorry that I had to save you in the first place. I should have just let them beat you up - would that have made you happy?”

“It’s not even about that!” He swats her hand away. “We can’t do that to people, Elaine! It’s not right!”

“What makes it so different from you punching that guy? Why is it so wrong for me to use my magic the way you used your fists?” Why can’t he understand that? Even Justin, who has always cautioned them about keeping their powers secret, said she was right. “I was looking out for us too. I’m not wrong - I know I’m not.”

“Well, neither am I.”

She can only stare at him in frustration. She can feel the wall between them, chips flying from the blows. It will not come down tonight. They are both too stubborn, and she refuses to relent. 

Instead, she gives him a look of disappointed disgust and turn backs to her room.

Harry doesn’t call after her this time.

oOo

They don’t talk to each other for a very long time afterwards.

It hurts more than Elaine thinks it should.


	10. L’Amoureux

  
**10  
oOo | L’Amoureux | oOo**

oOo

The red-gold blaze and heat of the summer sunset lazily falls to the symphonic hum of crickets and the white-hot brilliance of stars in a sky as dark as pitch. There is a cool breeze coming off of the lake, enough to blow away the last stubborn tendrils of humidity that still cling to the air. Wispy smoke from their campfire several dozen yards away dances towards the moonlit cloud of galaxy that stretches from horizon to horizon, impossibly vast and hazy. She can still smell the sticky-sweet scent of charred marshmallows and the mouthwatering aroma of beer brats, can still taste the remnants of both on her tongue.

She doesn’t sit or stand on the floating dock. The black water of the lake, as comforting as the gentle lapping of the waves sounds, still brings back memories that she can’t pinpoint the source of, the faintest ghosts of childhood. Instead, she is perched on a large rock several feet away from the rocky bank, bare feet curled into the cool grass and dirt. The book she has been reading - one of the Tolkien books after Harry’s continuous insistence - sits forgotten by her side as she stretches her legs out in front of her and gazes up at the sky.

“You’re still not going to come over here, are you?”

Elaine lowers her gaze to where Harry is leaning out over the water, juggling a few flat stones in his hand. He pulls back his arm and she watches as he sends one of the stones skipping several paces over the placid surface of the tiny lake. The ripples glisten silvery-white in the moonlight.

“Why should I? If you fall in the water, I’m going to have to save you.”

Harry snorts. “You can save me better if you weren’t a million miles away.”

“I wouldn’t have to save you at _all_ if you didn’t insist on standing on the edge like a doofus.”

Harry doesn’t turn around to argue his point and Elaine doesn’t move from her rock. Instead, she leans back again, looking up at the sky. Their nightly outings aren’t as plentiful as they used to be when they were younger. Justin is far more strict about their curfew but Harry and Elaine both consider it negligible, slipping out at all hours of the night thanks to a combination of spells. Justin never says anything, and they both silently congratulate the other on their ability to destroy this one restriction laid upon them.

Even so, campouts are few. Even though they’ve moved a bit south, the nights are still chilly for a majority of the year. Summer lasts for a scant few brilliant green weeks before disappearing into the apple-scented air of autumn. It doesn’t bother her though, not really. The days of golden deserts and stifling heat have long faded into the recesses of her memory, and there’s only a little pang of nostalgia when she thinks of the mountains. She’s come to the conclusion that this is the sort of life that Justin means them to have, and there’s something devilishly adventurous about having to move from place to place, a trail of magic following their footsteps.

A lightning bug lands on her book, briefly glowing a bright green before fading back into the warm darkness of night. Elaine lets out a lazy sigh as she glances down at her bare legs, wondering how many mosquito bites she’s going to have tomorrow morning. But the summer night is too hot to wear anything but shorts and even Harry’s too-big Electric Mayhem t-shirt is knotted at her stomach. She is almost tempted to pull her hair back with the scrunchie wrapped around her wrist but the feel of the breeze through her long hair is just too nice.

After a few more moments of quiet, save for the crackle of the fire and the gentle lap of waves against the dock, she pulls her gaze away from the stars and calls over to Harry, “Are you really going to dump all the pebbles into the lake? Leave some for the shore.”

He snorts. “Sounds like you’re jealous because you can’t skip rocks.”

Elaine wrinkles her nose. “Why would I want to? I can just toss you in. Your head’s hard as a pebble - maybe you’ll skip.”

Harry laughs and something in Elaine’s stomach twists in a way that it has been doing a _lot_ lately whenever he does something or says something so stupidly… _Harry_. She quickly turns her eyes back to the stars above, hoping the warm glow of the bonfire hides her blush in case Harry turns around. She has caught him giving her odd looks a lot lately when he thinks she isn’t paying attention and she has always passed it off as Harry being weird and...well, being Harry. They’ve grown up together and while he’s definitely not _brother_ material, he is her best friend and that would just be so _strange_ if it is what she thinks it might be. 

She traces the constellations above in her mind, trying to distract herself. The looks don’t mean anything really, she tells herself. And it doesn’t matter if they did, does it? He is gangly and silly and always getting into fights and is too chivalrous for his own stupid good. She thinks about all of those nights spent under tents and shooting stars back in the blue shadow of the mountains. She thinks about walking home with him, sneakers scuffing on hot pavement as they trade jokes about their peers or debate about the looming presence of life after high school, a strange and foreign decision only a few scant years away. There are arguments too - none as terrible as the horrible one last spring but they still flare up from time to time. But forgiveness comes more readily nowadays.

Elaine presses her lips together. No, this is _Harry_. Her best friend. Her _only_ friend. So what does it matter that the boy who once destroyed a wasps’ nest for her and fed her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when Justin vanished on his trips had grown into someone...who wasn’t a boy anymore? 

She must’ve let out a sound of frustration because Harry’s voice breaks through her thoughts. “Oh come on, Elaine. It’s not going to kill you to stand here. I promise I won’t push you in.”

“Like you promised not to do a wind spell in the middle of my bedroom?”

“That was _one_ time.” He turns back to throwing the flat pebbles. “Come on, I won’t let you fall in.”

She rolls her eyes but rises anyway, briefly raising her arms over her head to stretch. Then she makes her way over to Harry, her footsteps disturbing a handful of white grass moths and lightning bugs nestled along the dark blades of grass. The dock is steady beneath her feet - she isn’t sure what she had been expecting - but the silver-capped water that surrounds her now is unnerving. She clenches her jaw and remains firmly in the center of the dock, refusing to go any further to the edge. “Fine. You win.”

Harry must not have heard her approach - she can see him jump slightly at the sudden nearness of her voice before turning. She’s reminded again by how much he keeps _growing_ , like some sort of impossibly stubborn weed. He’s almost as tall as Justin, though nowhere near as much a pirate. No, he is still very much a lost boy in her eyes and maybe always will be. 

It takes her a moment to realize that Harry is staring at her and again, that strange swimming feeling waltzes through her stomach again. She smothers it with a raised eyebrow and says, “What are you staring at? You didn’t think I was going to come?”

Harry blinks slowly, as if he’s waking from a dream, and then he shakes his head, his usual rakish grin appearing on his face. “I’m very persuasive. I knew you were going to come...but why are you standing all the way back there?”

“Because I like it right here.”

“Liar.” He sighs. “Listen, the water can’t be more than seven feet deep here.”

“There’s mud at the bottom of the lake. What happens if your feet get stuck?”

Harry frowns, shifting from one foot to the other as if he’s trying to contemplate the right answer to give. She watches him, the golden and silver light from the bonfire and the moonlight creating a whirl of intriguing shadows across his face. She doesn’t know what possesses her to move forward, slowly and keeping her eyes off the lake. She wasn’t sure how deep the water was that stole her parents so many years ago, can’t really remember much about that night anyway. She sits down just a foot away from the edge, the soft sounds of lapping water echoing just beneath her. 

Above her, she hears Harry let out a sigh. “Was that so bad?”

Elaine looks up at him, her lips twisted into a disbelieving grin. “Yes, you idiot. You know I don’t like water.”

“Then why do you take so long in the bathroom every morning?” Harry points out, a teasing lilt in his voice. He then pitches his voice to poor imitation of hers, “‘Harry, I’m almost done. Harry, stop knocking. Dammit, Harry, don’t you know that I have to go through at least a small reservoir’s worth of water before I’m presentable to the world?’”

Elaine says nothing, although her brows lower in irritation. She reaches over, her fingers gently ghosting his shin and quietly, almost cheerfully, whispers, “ _Tjaw_.” A brief but powerful gust of wind snaps from her fingers, knocking Harry’s legs out from under him. He wobbles uncertainly for a heartbeat before falling into the lake with an ungraceful splash and a yelp of dismay, sending up a shower of water that lands like rain on Elaine’s bare arms and legs. Discarded pebbles thump down next to her. 

She is already laughing by the time Harry breaks the surface, spluttering and soaked, and she only laughs harder when he turns to give her a sour look. He says something accusatory but she can’t hear him over the sound of her laughter and the splashing of treading water. Harry grumbles something darkly, haphazardly tossing up water at her but she nimbly dodges to the side and lays flat on her, holding her stomach as she continues laughing.

She expects Harry to swim over to shallower water and them clamor back onto the dock but when he doesn’t, she turns her head to peer out over the lake, a grin of victory still on her face. “Did the mud get to you, Harry?”

“I guess I’d be a goner if it did,” comes the dry reply. Elaine pokes her head over the edge of the dock, looking down at Harry who is still glaring up at her. “Help me up.”

“You can pull yourself up. Remember - when I come in contact with water, I apparently lose all sense of time and decency. It’d be a shame if you drowned there because I was worried about fixing my hair.” She winks at him. “Go on, it’s shallower back that way.”

Harry makes a face at her. “Come on, Elaine. There’s a huge cloud of mosquitoes over there.” He reaches up. “It won’t hurt you any to give me a hand up. Besides, you got my clothes all wet. Since I’m going to die of pneumonia now, you can at least let my last living moments _not_ be in the water.”

She rolls her eyes. “You drama queen.” She reaches out, clasping Harry’s hand-

-and finds herself pulled headfirst into the lake.

She has enough time to let out a shout of surprise before the water closes over her head and the symphony of night is muffled by the dark abyss of water filling her eyes, ears, and mouth. She can’t see anything but the darkness of the lake, not even the silver ripples of moonlight she knows to be just the past the surface. There is another world beneath the placidity of the lake’s surface, a world that she hasn’t seen in so many years and one that she scarcely remembers.

It can’t be more than a few seconds but Elaine feels the biting panic of a long-forgotten memory surfacing. A woman with green eyes, the glint of a golden bracelet vanishing into the depths of the water, her father...or at least someone she assumes is her father...reaching for her through the murk...and there was the cold, the dark and infinite cold that could seep through, blind her eyes, deafen her ears, stop her heart. And it becomes impossible to breathe, the disorienting memories as confusing as up and down in the present and she wants to open her mouth to scream…

Her head breaks the surface of the lake.

She takes in a huge gulp of heart, coughing and blinking stinging water out of her eyes. The dock is a few feet away and Harry...Harry is impossibly close. His face is only a few inches away and she realizes that his arm is around her waist and that she is pressed flush against him. It also takes her a moment to notice how steady they are and even though her feet aren’t touching the sloping bottom of the lake, she realizes that Harry must be standing and that it isn’t as deep as she had thought in this part.

She can see Harry grin at her out of the corner of her eye. “See, I told you I wouldn’t let you- ow! What was that for?”

She pulls back her fist to punch him in the chest again. “You _idiot_. Why would you do that? Why would you...you know I hate the water!” She isn’t sure whether to growl in frustration at him or dunk his head under the water, pounding his chest a few more times. “I should’ve tied rocks to your ankles first, you stupid, unthinking, knock-kneed, skinny, hard-headed scarecrow!”

He is silent save for his apologetic smile but he doesn’t stop her from beating against his chest...but he doesn’t let go either. She knows, in the back of her mind, that he could just release her and let the annoyance carry her away. Or he could stop her - he’s gawky and way too tall but she knows he’s stronger than her. The grown lost boy, she thinks errantly, desperately wanting to kick him but scared that her feet would never find solid ground if he let go.

After several moments, she is out of breath and her hand is sore. She doesn’t meet Harry’s eyes - that is a soulgaze she has never had a desire to unfold - and instead glares angrily at a point just past his shoulder. She can feel his gaze on her but she refuses to acknowledge it - not with lake up to her chin and the moon blindingly bright overhead and his arm still around her waist.

“Are you done?”

“Do you want to lose a few teeth in the process too? Don’t push your luck.”

“I’m sorry.” She feels him sigh dramatically. She can feel everything - his breath on her cheek, the beat of his heart, the warmth of his body. She doesn’t look at him. “Next time I’ll make sure you have a life vest. Or those floating arm things.”

She growls, wanting to kick him in the shin. But instead, she reaches for the edge of the dock and begins to pull herself up. She feels a thousand times heavier, as if the water can’t bear to let her go after losing her again, but she manages to get back onto the dock. She begins wringing out her hair as Harry pulls himself out of the water too, his shirt plastered to his chest, droplets of water raining from his hair onto his nose and cheeks and the silver amulet he’s taken to wearing around his neck. He sits next to her, giving her a long appraising look that Elaine tries _very_ hard to ignore.

“I wouldn’t have let you drown, you know.”

“That’s reassuring,” Elaine replies dryly, her back ramrod straight. She’s tempted to go back towards their bonfire to dry out but the idea of walking even a few feet in drenched shorts is unpleasant so instead she lies back on the dock, frowning up at the stars as if to blame the multitude for her predicament. “Next time, I’ll use a stronger spell and send you halfway across the lake.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Harry grin. “Elaine, that’s just cruel. Who would do that to a person?”

She rolls her eyes in response and Harry settles back next to her, hands laced behind his head as a cushion. For a brief moment, a wave of deja vu creeps across Elaine’s mind - how many times had they done this when they were younger, staring up at the stars as Harry tried to teach her all of the stories of heaven? This night isn’t much different. It’s earlier in the summer and the stars have shifted just a bit, but Harry is still here, her north star, just as he promised her all those years ago.

“Pegasus.”

She feels Harry’s eyes on her. “Hmm?”

She points upwards. “Pegasus. He’s disappearing over the horizon with Aquarius.” She frowns, tracing the outlines of great mythological beasts in her head. “Sagittarius is getting help tonight though. It looks like the moon and some of the planets are helping guide his arrows, in case Scorpios decides to act up. Never did quite understand that considering you’ve got the shield bearer basically sitting on Scorpios’s head.”

“I can’t believe you actually listened to me when I told those stories.”

Elaine smirks. “You’re somewhat amusing when you’re not being an ass.”

“Only somewhat?” He sounds offended, propping himself up on one elbow. “I’ll have you know that it takes quite a bit of cunning and finesse to be this clever and amusing.”

“Probably why it kills so many of your brain cells - too much work goes into the process.”

Harry makes a face at her. “Not as much as the time it takes you to use the bathroom in the morning. Hell’s bells, Elaine - what do you _do_ in there? Summon ancient goddesses of beauty to help you with your hair?”

In hindsight, tackling him may not have been the best idea - the dock was perhaps seven feet across at the most and one miscalculated toss can send one or both of them back into the water. Elaine knows that Harry is particularly ticklish around his neck and knees and between the good-natured punching, she aims for those areas with devilish smiles. The sounds of a summer night are drowned out by their laughter and protests, buzzing insects and lapping silvery water falling to the wayside.

Eventually though, Harry’s longer reach and strength win out and he pins her against the dock, breathless and growling. She’s laughing too hard at the look on his face to do much more than weakly squirm beneath his weight, her left wrist immobile beneath his firm grasp. “Stars, you’re heavy. Get off.”

“And let you attack me again? Unmitigated violence is such a bad character trait.”

“You’re one to talk,” she replies, trying to sit up. But Harry is much too heavy and he’s basically using his entire body to keep her pinned and it’s only then that she notices that he _is_ practically lying on top of her, so close that his amulet almost brushes against her nose. Still soaked from their dive into the lake, she can feel the hardness of his muscles and the beat of his heart against her chest. She freezes, her own breath getting lodged in her throat as the knot in her stomach that has frequently appeared over the past several months tightens in the pit of her stomach. It takes her a few seconds to realize that Harry has gone just as still, staring at her with that same expression that she has caught him wearing so frequently. 

But...this is Harry. Impulsive, protective, sarcastic Harry. Her best friend. Her _only_ friend. And he has grown from a lost boy to...her heart feels as if it’s about to leap from her throat.

_I..._

She moves first, sitting up only enough to lightly brush her lips against his - slowly, tentatively, almost shyly. Reaching up with her right hand, she curls her fingers in the damp cloth of his shirt, although she nearly stops in alarm when she realizes that Harry still seems frozen above her. She begins to pull away, the beginnings of an irritated apology on her lips, her cheeks flushing in embarrassment. “Harry, I’m…”

But he cuts her off, his hand cupping the side of her face as he leans down to kiss her. An electricity that has nothing to do with magic (or perhaps this is a magic in its own that she has never known) grips her, dissolving the knot in her stomach into something that is both molten as fire and effervescent as air. Time simmers, burning away into the smoky blue night and into the watchful gaze of the ancient constellations overhead. A part of her is laughing, utterly _ecstatic_ from the rush of giddiness that fills her from head to toe. 

Another smaller part is silent as the graven, taken aback by the suddenness and strangely fearful of what this kiss means.

_I wish..._

But for now, she enjoys this - the taste of his tongue dancing on hers, the sound of their soft breaths barely muting the roar from the rush of blood to her head, the sturdy gentleness of his body against hers. For a moment, she wonders why people even ever break away to breathe when she could keep doing this forever. It passes and suddenly they are both drawing away, flushed and out of breath and staring at each other in something akin to wonder.

Harry breaks the silence first, the tips of his ears turning red in the moonlight. “I...wow. I mean...um...wow. Hi.”

“Hi,” she replies with a grin. She can’t stop smiling. “How are you?”

He pauses, as if he truly needs to consider. “Good. Great. I mean...wow. That… _we_...”

“Yeah.” She brushes her fingers against the pentacle dangling between them. “So..."

“So.”

Somehow eloquence has dissolved as quickly as the smoke burning from their bonfire. Harry abruptly rolls off her onto his back to stare dazed up at the sky. Elaine turns her head to the side to take in his profile - the angles that have grown sharper and starker as he’s gotten older, the deep set darkness of his eyes, the wild tangles of his hair. These are things, little things, that she’s been intimately familiar with for years...yet. _Yet_. She curls her hands at her sides to keep from reaching out.

This is Harry.

“Why do you think...?” She stops, turning to look up at the stars. She doesn’t know how to put this. She’s never had to _think_ about this before. “That was nice.”

“Just nice?” Harry sounds disbelieving. “I was going to say amazing.”

“Amazing is good too.” _Amazing is wonderful._ “It’s just..." _I’ve known you since we were kids. Since you fought off the bees and I kept Justin from finding out about our teachers and we camped out like this all the time. You...this isn't what it should be. But...who else would I want it to be with?_

"I know." He laughs and there's something to it that causes her to think that this is all some sort of dream, lit by fire and moonlight, over a midsummer's eve. "I know. It's weird, a little bit. But a good weird, I think."

At some point, his hand has found hers and his fingers curl around hers. Solid. Real.

This is Harry. This is her best friend. She loves him.

There is a word unspoken hanging in the air, one that she knows he'll never say. She closes her eyes, the taste of him still on her lips, and doesn't let go of his hand.

_I wish..._

oOo

When they return home, Justin is waiting for them. He says nothing of their entwined hands or their soaked clothing. He berates them - Elaine can't remember what about - and there are consequences. There are always consequences but this time they seem to deflect off some sort of buoyed armor that has built up around her. She remembers Harry squeezing her hand, a faint grin of mischief.

She falls asleep in his arms, nothing more intimate than Harry chasing away a thousand years worth of nightmares. For once, there is nothing but blissful darkness and warmth.

It is a memory of something she once had, something she may have only just found again.

A place to truly call home.


	11. L'Impératrice

  
**11  
oOo | L'Impératrice | oOo**

oOo

Christmas mornings have always meant very little to Elaine. She doesn’t remembering any gift-giving - if there had been any in the first place - when she was a little girl. Those memories are gone, washed away by the tide of black water and sepia-toned years. Her new life, the life she has with Justin and Harry, doesn’t support itself by trifles or carols or holiday cheer, and she frequently only gives bemused looks to her peers who gleefully and loudly play their games of supposed goodwill and family bonding. Teachers still include them in the all-encompassing Christmas spirit that plagues their high school, but behind the stale gingerbread cookies that taste like cardboard or the gaudily-decorated cards that leave red and green glitter all over her pale hands, there is an air of pity that comes with the holiday that Elaine despises.

She wakes before Harry, unusual but not unexpected. Her back is to him but she can feel the slow, warm breaths of his slumber on her neck, his arm wrapped loosely, protectively, around her waist. For several moments, she stays curls up against in, the cobwebs of sleep only slowly burning away as the cool gray of dawn brightens minute by minute. She knows there is only a faint dusting of snow outside, barely enough to cover the dark straggles of grass in their yard, and that anyone’s dream of a white Christmas would be disappointingly ruined by uncooperative weather. It doesn’t matter anyway - the pale ice blue skies, barely visibly behind the curtains of her room, are the hallmark of a bitterly cold day regardless of snow.

The little house keeps heat as well as can be imagined with no electricity and with the fireplace all the way down in the living room and basement. Elaine and Harry often switch off sleeping in each other’s beds now that winter has begun to sink its sharp claws into the American heartland. It is usually a good thing too since more often than not, the previous night has ended with both of them undressed - the extra body heat come morning is more than acceptable.

Elaine licks her lips, tasting the remnants of salt on her tongue, and continues to watch the December dawn try to pierce into her bedroom. She’ll have to get up eventually - Justin is gone until the new year, to stars knew where, and she could not begin to contemplate another Harry Dresden-approved breakfast of cola and peanut buttered toast. She shifts against him, the heat of his skin and their tangled limbs a comfort and a lazy whisper for her to not leave the bed.

Still, her stomach will start growling soon and Harry already makes fun of her when that happens. She tries to wiggle out of Harry’s embrace and lets out a huff of a laugh when his arm tightens around her and he lets out a moan of protest.

“Let me up, Harry. I’ve got to make breakfast.”

“No, don’t. S’cold.” His words are slurred with sleep. Elaine knows that his eyes are probably still closed, trying to shield himself from the encroaching rays of daylight. “Stay with me.”

Elaine rolls her eyes, brushing her hair from her face. Hell’s bells, she must look a mess. “I’m hungry and I don’t want peanut butter and toast.”

“Nothin’ wrong w’that.”

“It is when you’ve had it five mornings in a row.” She manages to swing her legs over the edge of the bed, slipping out of Harry’s grasp as she does so...and immediately curses the decision to throw off the heavy blankets. The air is freezing, slapping her bare skin with a shocking ferocity that makes her gasp and curse simultaneously, earning her a snorted, sleepy laugh from Harry.

“Toldja.” She glances over her shoulder at him, glaring, rubbing at her arms in a vain attempt to warm herself up. He’s awake, dark eyes peering at her from over a mound of discarded quilts and coverlets. She knows the sunlight must frame her somehow because Harry stares longer than he usually would, entranced. She catches the breath he takes, feels the winter sun coolly alight on her hair, and smirks back at him. Harry notices, snorts, and the spell is broken - he languidly smiles and closes his eyes. “Should’ve stayed with me.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Oh?” And then she reaches down and tosses all the sheets to the side.

Harry lets out a yelp, eyes shooting open as the chill of morning violently crashes into him. She laughs. He glares at her, reaching for the covers and muttering about how _irritating_ winter is but she is already moving, straddling him and pinning him back into place on the bed.

“Hell’s bells, Elaine - it’s _cold_.”

She leans over him, hands on either side of his head, her hair falling like a curtain to shield the sun from his eyes. He blinks. “Of course it’s cold. It’s winter. It’s Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas then. Give me the covers back. It’s freezing.”

She makes a face at him and then taps him on the nose with her finger. “You’re always complaining.” She trails the same finger from his nose to his lips - strangely kissable despite their unamused frown - to his throat and down his chest. Down, down, down - and then...those lips part in a strangled gasp and he looks up at her in surprise. She hasn’t done much - mornings, she knows, are very helpful with this - but it’s funny to see his face so taken aback. “Complain, complain, complain. Stars, Harry - it’s _just_ winter.”

He swallows, glares, swallows again. “I like summer, thank you very much.”

Elaine lets out an unladylike snort, lowering her hips, shifting, teasing. Harry closes his eyes and she leans forward to capture his groan with her lips.

In the end, it _is_ Harry who finally untangles himself from Elaine to go downstairs to wrangle together a breakfast for them. He tosses on a sweatshirt and jeans and runs from the room before Elaine can tell him that she refuses to eat another slice of toast for breakfast for the rest of the year. It’s probably a moot point considering Harry’s culinary skills but her mind is now deliciously fuzzy and maybe tea and toast won’t be so bad for a Christmas morning anyway. 

She grabs one of the quilts off the floor, hastily tossed and quickly forgotten in the middle of their enthusiasm, and bundles herself in it. Curling up, she waits until the smell of burned toast eventually finds its way upstairs, briefly wondering, as she always did, where Justin could possibly be. He never spoke of the places he vanished to, and she and Harry learned long ago not to ask. It has never kept her mind from wandering, to imagine the strange, clandestine places he visits, places full of dangerous magic and odd people. Others with their brand of talent don’t exist - she knows this from Justin’s somber warnings - but perhaps there are other creatures and the faerie tales may have some truth in them after all.

Their training has changed subtly in the past several months, so slight that only exchanged whispers in the dark of night had made either of them realize it. It is still difficult to pinpoint exactly what the changes are, exactly - baseball training still covers them with bruises and Justin still pushes them past the boundaries of their strength in order to learn new spells, new foci, new magical theories (and isn’t the latter fun, as their classmates struggle with basic chemistry and biology, and Elaine and Harry have long since been working on the working of physics in regards to their magic?).

Last month, after they both had slipped out of their classes unnoticed to find a comfortable makeout spot, Elaine had asked Harry if he thought Justin knew about their change between _them_. Harry had laughed and said, “Probably. I bet he’s just glad that he doesn’t have to talk to us about it. That’d be super awkward.”

Elaine had agreed with a grin but it didn’t change the curious state of affairs in their home, the secrets that aren’t secrets and silence that speaks louder than any words can convey.

It takes her a moment to realize that the room has become very warm very suddenly, and she feels tiny droplets of sweat beading along her hairline. Frowning - and slightly worried that Harry has started a fire downstairs - she throws off the quilt...and finds herself staring into a pair of green eyes that are startlingly familiar, a face that is recognizable despite the years since their last meeting.

To her credit, Elaine doesn’t yell at the sudden presence of the girl - well, young woman truly. She imagines that there is something other than a few scant years engraved on the other’s face, a sharp delicateness in the bones and in her posture that is far more refined than what Elaine remembers. Her silvery gold hair is plaited into a long braid, resting against a rich green sundress that would not have been out of place in the middle of a blazing summer. A long silver chain ends in something unknown hanging between her breasts, hidden beneath the green fabric of the dress. She sits at the end of the bed, hands folded quietly in her lap as she peers at Elaine with something akin to amusement.

“Hello, dearest.”

Has it been almost three years since they have last seen each other? Elaine is not entirely sure and finds the sudden intrusion disconcerting. She reaches for the quilt again to wrap around her shoulders. “I don’t think you’ve seen me enough to calm me that.” Hands curling into the familiar fabric of the quilt, she finds herself unable to decide between shouting for Harry or letting the newcomer be. “Here to wish me a merry Christmas after all these years?”

The girl Aurora smiles and somehow it is kinder and less specious than the smiles of before. “Please forgive me. I have meant to visit you many times in these past few years but there have been...obstacles. Maybe I can make it up to you?” Her eyes drop down to Elaine’s stomach, and the look on her face becomes a shade more knowing. “Would you care for your beloved’s seed to quicken in your belly?”

For a moment, Elaine isn’t entirely sure she had heard the other girl correctly. As the words sink in, Elaine feels heat rise up her neck and into her cheeks. Her fingers tighten in the cloth of the quilt as she replies back in a cold tone, “No. That’s none of your business.”

“I’m sorry if I upset you." The look Aurora gives her is apologetic. "It wasn’t my intention. I just thought that was the goal of such interactions.”

“It isn’t.” Elaine pauses and then throws the other girl a suspicious look. “How would you even _know_?”

The smile grows slightly wider. “Neither of you are very quiet.”

Elaine scowls to hide her embarrassment, even though a voice in the back of her mind admits the truth in that - whenever Justin vanished on one of his trips, they took advantage of that often...and loudly. Still, she could count on one hand the number of times she’s spoken with this strange ghost of a girl - the statement is too audacious, too presuming. “I said, it’s none of your business. How did you even get in here?”

Aurora looks politely confused. “I’m sorry?”

“I’m assuming you didn’t rappel off the roof down into my room,” replies Elaine dryly, nodding towards the closed window. There is condensation on it and she swiftly attempts to hide her surprise with a look of boredom, her mind suddenly racing. “And if you broke in, you’re clearly the worst burglar ever, sitting on the edge of my bed like this. So how did you get in?”

The placid amusement on Aurora's face is only a little disconcerting since it seems, in the light of her lack of knowledge, a little mocking. Aurora lifts her shoulders in an elegant shrug before gently murmuring in a chastising tone, “You suspect me so much. I don’t think I’ve done anything to warrant it.”

“Seriously?” Elaine can’t keep the incredulity out of her voice. “You’ve only shown up twice before in my whole life, always talking in riddles about Shakespeare. Then you disappear for almost three years and show back up again, somehow in my _room_ of all places - which you shouldn’t have been able to do at _all_ \- and you just want me to trust you? Is there a part that’s even more ridiculous that I missed?”

“Well, you have the gist of it.” Aurora tilts her head to the side. “Though I recall apologizing. I was truthful with you when we first met, Elaine - I want to be your friend.”

“Friendships,” Elaine says pointedly, desperate to shrug off her quilt in the heat, “usually require both people to not pop up like chainsaw-wielding serial killers.”

To her surprise, Aurora seems to consider this for a moment. Elaine is very aware of the accusations still hanging aloft in the air, pressing down on her shoulders with the same heaviness as the growing heat. She expects to see smoke slipping beneath the door and briefly wonders why she hasn’t actually gone to check on Harry or called for his assistance. The girl, with her mysterious comings and goings, is too unknown to be either friend or foe, and Elaine still has not quite managed to figure out how she bypassed the threshold.

Eventually the heat is too much and Elaine curses, scanning the room for clothing. Aurora watches her as she reaches for a discarded sweatshirt, too big for a normal sweatshirt yet too short to pass as a dress. But it’s not very warm and certainly better than the quilt. It is still unnerving though to have this stranger with too-green eyes watching her as she hurriedly pulls the sweatshirt over her head, her golden-brown hair pulled taut by the collar. She tucks her hands into her sleeves, annoyed, just as Aurora murmurs, “I’d like to think I owe a debt to someone who knew you.”

 _Someone who knew me...?_ It takes Elaine a few moments to grasp the significance of those words, spoken so quietly and casually, almost with apologetic reluctance. When they finally settle on her mind, like a net charged with electricity, she can almost feel her heart quicken, her eyes widen. She looks away from Aurora moments before the other girl can glimpse the wary hope in her eyes. For as much as Justin has always warned her about thinking about the life she might have known if her parents had lived through the accident so many years ago, there will always be a part of her that always hopes, always wonders…

But Aurora...Aurora cannot be much older than Elaine herself. Enigmatic, yes. Strange, true. But what if it is only a false lead, a promise of only stories from the orphanage, quiet reminders of the children whose faces she has long since forgotten. It almost seems like another life, those years hiding away as her magic made itself known in her bones, and sometimes she thinks of the sun-baked sidewalks and bleached sky as if it is part of a faerie tale. Stranger still to think of the life that came before even that, lost in the infinite darkness of a river...

But she hides all of this, strangles that wistful longing with an iron fist molded by Justin, and casually replies, “Everyone who knew me is either dead or doesn’t matter anymore. No point in trying to keep a debt at that point.”

Her defiant words are greeted with a smile. “You may be right. The person I would have been in debt to died years ago. But I always thought it’d be a kindness to repay his with my own.”

_I would spin the tale for you of the other Miranda. But even in these few years, you have gained and learned little. Unlike him._

The memory causes gooseflesh to bristle along her arm. She pauses momentarily, glancing at the other girl out of the corner of her eye. “Maybe I’ll let you off the hook.”

“No.” Aurora shakes her head. “I _told_ you. Even if you don’t know me, I’d like us to be friends. Should I visit you more often?”

“You could tell me how you managed to get into my room.” Gesturing to the door, Elaine doesn’t bother to hide the steel in her voice. Long ago, Aurora never answered her question about her true nature and even now, Elaine doubts she’ll receive an answer more concrete than the twisting words and riddles that always grace the girl’s tongue. “Breaking and entering is a crime, you know. And I’m not super flattered by how much you’ve stalked me over the past couple of years either.”

A look of consternation flashes across Aurora’s face - and something else as well, brilliant and hot but gone too swiftly for Elaine to identify. “Everyone has their secrets, Elaine. Even you - you’ve kept me a secret from your Ferdinand and Prospero for years.”

“That’s different. I don’t know who you are.” 

“A friend.”

“So you’ve said.” Elaine shrugs, ignoring the biting sense of _danger_ that tinges in the back of her mind. “You’re not a wizard. Justin would’ve known. Which means you’re either a really great burglar - which I doubt since the only thing you’ve stolen is any normal person’s sense of manners - or something else. And I don’t like the idea of _something else_.” She briefly wishes that she hadn’t teasingly removed her focus last night when she was with Harry - her shields are certainly _better_ than his but she still can’t create one without a focus.

Aurora frowns at her and for a moment, Elaine feels every muscle in her body in her tense. The air is warm but dry - surely she can create enough of a spark to defend herself for a moment if Aurora decides to be a very _unfriendly_ something else. She can’t summon enough energy to do the brute force of Harry’s magic but she is good enough to work subtle spells on a whim - one of the few things Justin has actually praised her for.

But the tension dissipates slightly as the other girl shakes her head. “You’re right.” She sounds a little abashed. “It’s unfair of me to expect friendship from you when I’ve never been forthright with you. You just remind me so much of someone else - every time I see you I expect you to be the same. But, as you said, those people died a long time ago. I shouldn’t hold you to standards you never knew.”

Elaine snorts, her guard still up if only a little. “Should I be insulted?”

“No. But I hope you forgive my rudeness.” Aurora stands then, the long drape of her skirt swirling like emerald water around her legs - Elaine has never seen a dress flow as elegantly as it did on the strange girl. She is not very tall despite her long, graceful limbs but Elaine still finds herself looking up at her, hands still stubbornly wrapped in the warmth of the sweatshirt. “Could I make it up to you?”

“Answering a few questions might help.” But it’s as if Aurora doesn’t hear her. She reaches up to unclasp the silver chain around her neck, pulling the mysterious item from beneath the bust of her dress. Elaine frowns at it - it looks strikingly familiar for some reason even though she is certain she has never seen Aurora wear anything like it before...and suddenly she feels her fingers clench into fists, her breath catching in the back of her throat. “That’s-”

Aurora hands the silver pentacle, the familiar five-pointed star captured within a smooth circle, over to her. “Yours. It isn’t much, I’m afraid. But for an apology, I hope it’s satisfactory.”

Elaine finds the charm suddenly in her cupped palm, the silver chain cool and pooling against her fingers. It fits perfectly into her hand, surprisingly hefty despite its size, the brilliant and untarnished silver glowing as brightly as a winter morning. It is a twin to Harry’s in nearly every way and a part of her wonders why Harry still hasn’t come up to see about the strange new voice and a part of her feels as if this is yet another secret she can never let Harry know about.

It takes her a moment to realize that Aurora is looking at her expectantly, an unreadable emotion in her bright green eyes. “Is it enough?”

Elaine’s brow furrows. Justin will ask, she thinks. Justin will _know_. But can she say that it’s just a medallion from a nearby store? A gift from her boyfriend? But what will Harry say? “It’s fine. It’s just...where am I supposed to say I got this? My imaginary ghost friend that Harry and Justin have never met?”

She must only imagine the flare of rage in that otherwise tranquil face - Aurora’s smile is more shy than strained. “It’s Christmas, isn’t it? A day of celebration and gift giving? Is it so much to believe that you’d have bought a charm for yourself?”

If Aurora had known anything about Elaine, it was that she isn’t one for trinkets. Still, she finds herself uncoiling the chain and placing it around her neck. The pentacle is a strange but not entirely unpleasant weight, resting just atop her breastbone. She quickly tucks it into sweatshirt, lies already forming in her head that she can delivery to Harry as neatly packaged as any gift. Touching the chain slightly and feeling the cold metal against her fingertips, she briefly wonders why it’s so important to keep Aurora a secret, hidden away for her thoughts only.

She realizes Aurora is still waiting for an answer. She lets out a breath, closing her eyes as she nods. “It’s enough, I guess. Even though don’t think I haven’t forgotten you still haven’t told me how you got in here.”

Aurora laughs and in that laugh is the promise of lush summer and sunlight. “Some secrets are better left unspoken. Though if you are still curious, I suppose I could tell you on the eve of summer.”

“The eve of summer?” She remembers another conversation, years ago, before a fire that would not start. “Beltane, you mean. My birthday.”

“Something to look forward to, I think.” Aurora smiles, but there is a sweet sadness there now that Elaine feels weight upon her more heavily than the pentacle or the chill of winter. “I’ve never meant you any harm. A friendship is all I seek. A repayment to _my_ Miranda, when I was Prospero.”

The words make little sense and Elaine bites her tongue to keep from letting out a snarky reply. Neither of them are old enough to be Prospero to _anyone_ \- a Ferdinand was more likely. Even Ariel, perhaps. She thinks there is more to Aurora’s words than simple fanciful casting and she wants desperately to ask more. But the words dry up in the heat of the room and she instead turns her gaze towards the window and the pale skies outside. The pentacle is warm against her skin. “Something to look forward to after winter, then.”

Aurora follows her gaze and then lets out a small sigh. “I despise winter.”

“Strong words.” Elaine glances at her out of the corner of her eye - Aurora’s face is remote, cold even. “Don’t like the cold?”

“There’s evil in winter.” If Aurora notices Elaine’s eyebrow lift in amused surprise, she doesn’t notice. “Winter brings dark days and terror. Never trust anything born of winter.”

 _Why do my imaginary friends have to be Shakespeare-spouting loons?_ Elaine thinks to herself before gesturing at the dress the other girl wears. “You’re sort of asking to hate the cold in that dress. Buy some boots and a coat and you might find it bearable.”

There - the unreadable expression on Aurora’s face, something alien and deep and cold as the winter she claims to hate. But then she turns away from Elaine, walking quietly towards the door. “I prefer summer. But I suppose both have their downfalls and insipidity.” She half-turns her head back towards Elaine, giving her a nod as if in farewell. “It was a pleasure to see you again, my dearest.”

The door swings open and Elaine can hear the nearly decrepit radio downstairs, Christmas carols wafting up from the kitchen alongside the savory smell of bacon and cinnamon. Other than Harry’s curses and the smell of food cooking over the fireplace, there is a peaceful restfulness to the morning that suddenly fills Elaine with a strange longing.

_Harry’s my family, my Ferdinand. But Prospero...and Miranda...it doesn’t make any sense. What sort of debt could Prospero ever carry for a Miranda?_

The question is maddening and the chill of winter has already started to seep into Elaine’s bones as Aurora moves away.

“Wait!” Elaine finds her voice, but this feels as if she’s drowning. She looks up at Aurora, fingers cold despite the heat of the room, and presses her lips together. This girl, this stranger, this enigma - it makes no sense and suddenly Elaine knows that with her gone the rest of the summer heat will vanish too. She clenches her fingers around the pentacle. “Tell me...your Miranda. The Miranda you told me about years ago. Who was it?”

The smile that Aurora gives her is like the sunrise.

“You haven’t guessed? What’s past is prologue - my Miranda was your father.”

And before Elaine can recover enough from the shock of those words, Aurora has already turned the corner and vanished.

oOo


End file.
